Chaotic Greedy
Regarding summoning, my GM once let me summon pseudonatural fiendish sharks in a desert after my reasoning of "pseudonatural beings fly in the face of natural law". He agreed that made sense, so then boom - Sharktopuses. Which weren't as effective as my Cthulhupedes, so I went back to them.
Okay, I'll try it your way for once
under no circumstances should i ever begin a story with
- once upon a time
- since the prehistoric ages, and the times of ancient greece
- it was a x and y (time of day)
even if recounting a legend, story from a previous adventure, or recap of something that happened in another player's absence. even if it actually did go like that.
Remember what we used to say? JACKPOT!
My god, its full of tropes....
@ Aetol : It stems from a general sense of 'I'm off to destroy the halflings, they've had it too good for too long.'.
The first, last and only time in popular culture that halflings have ever truly suffered is at the end of the Lord of the Rings; even then that particular part is forgotten by practically everyone. They are all one dimensionally jolly, happy and, above all else, good. The lands they live in are similarly saccharine. The average ersatz-hobbit is made from Incorruptible Pure Pureness and is the polar opposite of every shithole-dwelling Always Chaotic Evil race ever made. Only, there are also good examples of A.C.E races, even if they are sometimes few and far between, but there are no truly evil examples of halflings (save Belkar, and he's more of a psychotic than evil).
There are no halfling evil overlords or mad halfling wizards or halfling liches. There are no evil halfling empires or stripperific dark halflings waiting to take over the world. Just bland, bucolic niceness without any grit that would liven it up a little. Even the most cliched good human or elf kingdom can be expected to have a few corrupt nobles or a grand viser with a sleazy mustache to break up the glurge. The more pure and good a thing is, the more satisfying it is to corrupt and destroy it. Things don't get much purer than halflings and, for me at least, their entertainment value lies mostly in their destruction.
Also I think my treatment of such mindlessly saccharine creatures is one of the only things keeping a few of the people I play with from finding a reason/excuse to visit their favorite TV show. They know that if we ever ended up in the Place-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named, or even a thinly veiled Expy, I would make it my mission to cause as much chaos (read: hilarity) as possible before getting ROF Lstomped by the Orbital Friendship Beam.
@ Knightof Lsama : I spent most of a campaign using a (thankfully rechargeable) wand of dimension door as a dustbin. Anything that needed getting rid of got dumped through an untargeted portal. Junk items, rocks and soil, useless corpses, that paladin, uneaten food and used napkins all got thrown through a portal never to be seen again. Eventually the GM started making dice rolls whenever I did it, but nothing came of it until a few sessions from the end when he declared that I had failed the roll; the apple core I had just chucked in was thrown back at speed, hit me on the head and had a note tied to it that literally said 'Stop throwing your crap into our dimension'. Later the GM told me that if I had critically failed the past three weeks worth of rubbish would have landed on a shoggoth that we would have then had to fight.
@ Medinoc : The Pimp my Ride team didn't have the budget or resources to give a kinda sorta stolen Acclamator an ice blue paint job with real silver trim and stock the hanger with doof-fighters. We had to do it ourselves 
.
As for the weaponised astromechs, we rigged a cannon on our blinged up Acclamator that fired modified R2 units at the hulls of targeted shipping. They would then trundle around hacking everything they could, slice open vulnerable spots like airlocks and turret traverses and generally force our opponents to worry about the adorable murder-bots outside rather than focus on shooting at us. Unfortunately we got through a lot of units since we couldn't always retrieve survivors and a lot were destroyed in action.
Question not my madness, lest ye join me in it.
Evil halfling wizards, you say? I may have to make that happen. Or make a halfling bard that may or may not be an expy of David Lee Roth.
World's Cutest Direwolf
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
*glances at the pseudo-Roma and their secret God of Being Sneaky Shits in Races of the Wild*
*glances at the dino-riding hunters in Eberron*
*glances at the slaves in Golarion*
Saccharine. Bucolic. Untouched.
Pathfinder actually came out with an evil mind-controlling iconic halfling like last week.
edited 31st Jul '15 10:27:54 PM by rikalous
While taking over the world would probably be too much work, Belkar Bitterleaf (aka Death's Little Helper) would like to have a few words with you. And those words would probably "Sexy Shoeless God of War".
edited 31st Jul '15 5:10:30 PM by KnightofLsama
The Mod with the Migraine
That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw
Half-dragon vampire werewolf demonic tapeworm kittens! It's so crazy it just might work!
Spooky Scary Boneheaded Man
@The Man From Outside: It seems that you and I share a sentiment or two...
I must find I way to get into a game of something with you.
"The Stick has sentimental value. It's like an enormous, hideous teddy bear we can kill things with." -rikalous
Chaotic Greedy
edited 1st Aug '15 4:05:50 AM by Medinoc
"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."
Think of the mooks!
Well, I've said my philosophy before - rather than say no, say yes and give the consequences.
First, yes, since a tapeworm's natural habitat is in the intestinal tract, you could summon one into a creature (regardless of whether the tapeworm was mundane, demonic, angelic, or something else). The catch is, what happens after you do so.
Thing about tapeworms is, they are not exactly fast at doing damage. It takes time for a tapeworm to do its damage. If we're talking about a spell whose duration is in discrete amount of seconds (like summon monster spells in D&D and Pathfinder), the tapeworm will vanish well before it's had a chance to actually do anything.
A spell that causes disease probably would be a better way to do it - most tabletop games treat parasites as a variety of disease (such as the aforementioned two fantasy systems - while neither ever explicitly gives a rule about it, it's worth noting that every described parasite in both systems can be removed with remove disease, which is a de facto rule on the topic). Standard tapeworms can probably be handled by a weaker spell (like contagion), while you'd want something stronger for demonic ones (along the lines of a spell that could cause mummy rot).
EDIT: I stand somewhat corrected - remove disease actually does explicitly describe parasites as diseases that are affected by the spell. It's an actual rule, not an assumed one. It's not mentioned in the section on diseases, but that's an organizational issue - it's consistent rules-wise.
edited 3rd Aug '15 10:46:16 AM by 32_Footsteps
Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.
My god, its full of tropes....
@rikalous: There are awesome and/or hardcore halflings? I will be having words with the rest of my group.
@ Medinoc: We don't have to. We were lent the Acclamator and crew by a shady Imperial officer for a smuggling mission and we didn't remember that we were supposed give it back afterwards until after he was killed by rebels half a campaign later. Now we're just cruising the galaxy in our Chavclamator performing 'customs checks' on anything with an engine until we can find the cash to chrome-plate the turbolaser barrels and work out how we can blast obnoxiously loud music in space.
@Knightof Lsama: I don't have anything against Belkar, in fact he is my favourite OOTS character. But there needs to be more halflings like him to balance out the stereotypical jolly balls of oh-so-stabbable lard. THE SEXY SHOELESS GOD OF WAR NEEDS DICIPLES DAMNNIT! .
World's Cutest Direwolf
Yeah, game devs have been spicing up halflings since they noticed how many fucking professional thieves this supposedly bucolic and harmless race produces. And that's why Yondalla has a CN aspect they don't tell outsiders about.
edited 3rd Aug '15 3:43:40 PM by rikalous
$50 a day, plus expenses
This talk of non-jolly halflings reminds me of a bit of trivia in my GM's campaign world. Doing some investigation in a town run by a powerful guild, I've learned that they don't trust children at all, because far too many 'innocent kids' have turned out to be halfling assassins.
Don't take life too seriously. It's only a temporary situation.
A halfling assassin would be a fun character. Shiv someone in the back and whisper "The Shire sends its regards".
My god, its full of tropes....
- Inflict Chundering Shits doesn't do any actual damage.
- Loss of dignity does not cause HP loss.
- Dehydration doesn't come into effect fast enough for it to do damage.
- Loss of dignity does not cause HP loss.
- Everyone is to agree on the upgrades we get for The Chavclamator before we set out to buy them.
- Matt and/or Dave aren't allowed to even think of it. By order of the GM and on pain of the rest of the group unleashing everything we have the moment we realise what they've done.
- I cannot terrify anyone to the point they crap out their own skeleton.
Think of the mooks!
Well, strictly speaking, you could theoretically make someone rapidly lose water fast enough that dehydration would cause immediate damage... that said, all of the methods to do so that I could think of would probably do more damage from the action that caused the water to leave the body - I believe the proper phrase would be "to blow an o-ring."
Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.
Or alternatively exsanguination.
Think of the mooks!
@2370 Well, yes, but I kind of figured that method of dehydrating someone was generally covered in the standard ways to kill someone in a tabletop game, and usually the act of making someone desanguinate does more damage than the desanguination itself.
Well, I guess that's not true in Vampire (either version), but beyond that...
Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.
My god, its full of tropes....
- I am to make sure that I know EXACTLY what a rulebook contains and if there are others that are necessary to use said rulebook BEFORE buying the damned thing.
Smooth as a Skunk
13. I am not a "Legendary Phantom Thief Master Wizard Orcbane Skullcrusher Great and Powerful Overlord", and I am to immediately cease introducing myself as such.
14. Having a cat for a familiar does not require a spellcaster to be evil.
edited 15th Aug '15 1:01:26 PM by Ezekiel
The comics equivalent of PTSD.
- 1. The druid's animal companion is not our emergency food supply.
- 2. No asking the villains what colour their underwear is.
- 2a. No checking what colour the villain's underwear is.
- 3. If the party's rogue gets thrown in the brig with his weapons impounded, I will check to see if ALL his weapons were impounded before I mock him about it.
- 4. Our battle plan must involve more than eating corn chips loudly.
- 4a. Our battle plan may not involve corn chips.
- 5. No stripping in the middle of a random encounter.
- 6. No dancing in the middle of a random encounter, especially after the stripping.
- 7. No falling asleep in the middle of a random encounter.
- 8. I may not lick any artefacts we find.
- 9. I may not attempt to befriend the vampire lord.
- 10. If I fail to befriend the vampire lord, I am not to tell the guy we rely on for transportation.
edited 15th Aug '15 9:11:39 PM by MapleSamurai
Smooth as a Skunk
15. Cannot recreate in whole or in part any Sondheim musical during any scene.
The comics equivalent of PTSD.
I don't mind GM restrictions on certain spells or abilities, just as long as it's clear that those restrictions apply to everyone in the game, PC and NPC alike. If someone can do X with Y resources, I expect to do the same thing with the same resources. If I can't do X with Y resources, I expect nobody can.
It's pretty easy to see why they put those rules into place - create water is a fricking cantrip/orison, and people want to turn it into a save-or-die spell. The least expensive save-or-die spell that's explicitly one is 4th level (and that one, phantasmal killer actually has two saves to potentially avoid dying). The designers didn't want aquatic-based magic nukes running around, which is why create water is worded as it does.
For the idea of summoning something into a creature's open mouth... well, a couple of things. One, I only really know of one spell in D&D or Pathfinder that summons anything smaller than the Small size category (and that spell is summon swarm - yes, you could summon those into an open mouth, but that's because swarms work different than solitary beasts). That means that you're only really able to do it on some of the largest of foes.
Two, summon monster and summon nature's ally both specify that the summoned creature cannot be summoned into an environment that cannot support them. This is typically the "you can't summon whales to fall on your opponent in a landlocked area" rule. However, I think a reasonable GM would state that another being's mouth is an environment that cannot support another creature. Beyond that, I don't think it's a very good maneuver regardless. If your summon can fit into the creature's mouth, that sounds like the creature can just chew the summon.
@2345 To be fair, they do explicitly say that fire elementals are completely made of their element - fire elementals don't even have skin.
Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.