That’s fair. Neither is the Tarrasque.

How do they manage an average of 679 damage?

First Aerial bombardment rules would probably give the Tarrasque a DC 15 Reflex save for half damage for each. Assuming it was a surprise at first the Tarrasque probably doesn’t get this so I’ll ignore it.

Second, a Giant owl’s likely only weigh like 140lbs by loose calculation, being a little over 4x the height of a snowy owl (so assuming 4 times equivalent weight and then cubed is 64kg which approximately equals 141lbs. It could be a little higher but its not breaking 200lbs) and requiring falling at least 20ft before they even start ranking damage by the srd 3.5 rules for items falling on players (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/environment.htm). Assuming you meant 40ft over the Tarrasque, and allowing for 1d6 damage every 10ft past the point instead of the 20ft that’s implied to be required, the owls would deal 2d6 damage each at that height, requiring 20ft of falling to start incurring damage. Even without it that’s not 679 damage.

That’s pretty much 0 damage too, because 2d6 per owl - subtract the DR 15 of the tarrasque from each instance of damage - is 0 damage. Iirc there was a min 1 damage even for negative strength modifiers but DR superseded that. Even if I’m wrong that’s 1 damage per owl max.

Even if you went the 220ft up above the Tarrasque you’d need to hit maximum fall speed under the more polite 1d6/10ft rules, after falling 20ft, you’d end up with 20d6 each, the cap for fall damage. Which after DR is 440 damage.560 damage without DR.

Which actually isn’t that high up. I thought the Tarrasque was taller than 50ft, but its still a hell of a timed shot tbh. It assumes the Tarrasque doesn’t move for like 6 or 7 rounds, or moves in a straight line into the falling birds.

That doesn’t’ fix the weakness of a Tarrasque to some form of high impact drop damage, necessarily, just means that I’m suspicious the birds can pull it off.

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Drow freed from Lolth, in isolation of another way being convincingly presented to - likely forced on - them, have had how many thousands of years of abusive culture hammered & manipulated into them. More likely than not they’ll still develop an evil culture, though the structure of their society would likely shift due to power gaps. Given how they work either a single powerful demagogue or some sort of council system of the great houses.

Drow even under Lolth aren’t necessarily evil but she set them up for biological rewards for evil whenever she can (there’s little detail on this but I think that’s concept’s the source of the terrible “mother’s ecstasy at womb murders” thing - good idea, bad example/implementation), on top of enforcing an ongoing culture of brutality and wickedness. Its how most of the evil deities still allow for Free-will to empower their Faith. They combine physiological reward hijacking, adding aspects that encourage easier exclusion from others (isolation is good for limiting options), and rigorous and brutal cultural and societal reinforcement. It doesn’t prevent good, but it gives far higher hurdles for an evil race to overcome.

Respectfully, I can easily see a shared workplace at least encouraging screwing over customers. To me its an even more intense instance of the shareholder problem. Shareholders are obsessed with the money they’re getting back with no real work but the risk inherent in the bet they made. The workers are working, for a livelihood, and of course will want to improve their quality of life. They’re even more motivated to do so. And some of the best ways to do that, in the “make monkey brain happy” obvious short-term are the same policies the shareholders are already pushing. Will there be some pushback? Definitely, but you only have to sell a bunch of people on short-term easy money. And the lottery isn’t popular because people are smart about this stuff.

Ah, the good ol’ “I’m not, but actually am, but not enough that I should get a raise, but I really would like one and less work hours, but I really need to stay longer because I’m so slow at everything I do and am terrible at focusing so I should really be working harder to give you your money’s worth, but you’re probably not paying me as much as you should be for that work in hindsight” theoretical with yourself and your imagined boss.

Unless there’s a bug. Then it is my code and I have to fix it. Immediately. No, I don’t want to discuss my thought process for “why I made that decision” I want to fix it. Why are we having a chat about milk pouring technique while it is dripping off the fucking table. Prod is burning and you want to fiddle! (Meanwhile this is a minor bug that nobody has ever actually complained about but just the knowledge that it was my fault…)

100% approve. Would strongly consider rolling something like a d4 to determine how the demon reacted (modified by species, because a palrethees isn’t likely to attack). So for a palrethees it’d be like:

1 - Furious, bitter anger. Every deal it makes for the next d12 weeks is entirely centered on ruining the fighter in the most humiliating and harmful ways possible. Leaving dead innocents (like children or loose acquaintances) in their rooms to frame them, assaulting loved ones repeatedly whenever they think they’re safe to cause them suffering, slandering them ahead of their travels, or even just trying to assassinate them.

2 - Cold respect and a reward for the fighter’s cleverness. Maybe money or even a magic item, that comes with huge strings. (It was stolen, its cursed, someone very dangerous wants it, etc)

3 - Indifference and pulsing its fear creating affect just to be spiteful and drive away the fighter

4 - Actual amusement and a decision to follow the fighter around. Their new “friend” would probably amuse themselves in the same way any demon would, so atrocities would follow the fighter indirectly, the demon would get to make deals with those the fighter wronged/conflicted with for their souls, and maybe the demon even “helps” the fighter on occasion. As seen through the guise of a demon’s idea of helpful of course. It might also just wander away after a week or so after it got bored.

I mean you can be unconscious for more than head trauma. My thought was in line with heart issues and if the differences in sex played any part there, due to the differences in the appearance of problems with them between men and women, but maybe that’s not really relevant until they hit the hospital.(Since EMTs are stabilizing focused) Just having it on the card - avoiding the time needed to check especially if they’ve had surgery - seems helpful, if that was relevant. If its not of course it doesn’t need to be there but if there’s EMTs around chime in because obviously I don’t know.

I’d also add the consideration that a photo ID also serves the purpose of some base level medical information (or else our listing organ donor status on them is super weird) so having sex on there if you’re unconscious and the EMTs pick you up and need to check makes some sense. No reason both couldn’t work.

I mean, if it works like the bag they’d be protected by walls of force (iirc) around them on the astral plane. So its nice to know they’re not subject to being eaten by an Astral Dreadnought or something.

Although that makes my DM brain consider the concept for a Berbalang cabal seeking to feed themselves on the astral plane through the subjugation/encouragement and selective attachment of cursed “holding” items (that don’t have that field) onto their preferred prey.

It continues to worsen the longer you try and consider the motivation for the 11 year old. Of which I can think of at least 2, if not more, but I’ll spare us all.

Nah, I loved changing out those disks. Core memory nostalgia material right there. Waste of time for sure, but one I remember fondly in hindsight.

I wonder how long it takes for some of those people to transfer to a more embittered relationship with Bethesda over it? Assuming any of them have that “I’m staring at a title screen realizing I haven’t actually had fun playing the game in weeks but the dopamine loop of the ‘loot, kill, craft’ system had me deluded into thinking I was enjoying myself. Like a social media doom-scroller or something” moment.

I mean, that’s arguably incredibly conservative. “The old ways” and all that.

Devil: There are RULES, we had an AGREEMENT. I can’t just lie about those! Demon: Sure you can! The two get into a fight in the Sigil tavern. Harmonium soldiers come in to detain them, a fight ensues, both are slain. . . . Eternal blood war continues unperturbed

This is just my guess (I must solidly highlight that I haven’t played the game), but in normal D&D conditions its because you don’t survive Illithid tadpole implantation. Within about an hour or two you’re dead, and even if you kill the parasite before it completes its job you’re left pretty much brain-dead without a higher level Restoration or Heal spell because they directly eat gray matter.

They don’t just plug into your brain, they eat the gray matter and perform some sort of biological grafting between themselves and your nerves, then generate some sort of alien chemicals/hormones to morph the body over a week or more. So, despite BG3 letting you live, likely due to some sort of plot complication I’m unaware of slowing things down, killing the host isn’t likely to drive the parasite out of the body until its finished chowing down on your brain matter. (Even wild tadpoles left unattended eat brains until they grow into monsters.) Either way at this point you probably can’t actually be resurrected with Revivify, you’d need higher level Resurrection because your body isn’t fully intact anymore. (I mean, maybe you could but at best you’re in a brain-dead vegetative state with 1HP because Revivify doesn’t replace lost parts.)

Also a good chance the creature only abandoned the other host because they were already close to being out of brain food or something weird. Like them psychically being forced/ordered out of the host.

I fully expect Starfield was going to be disappointing, full stop.

If you play Planescape:Torment after this you might dig the Sensates/Society of Sensation. (Assuming that character has similar tastes to you.)

On top of some of the commentary here, I’d like to add that I think there’s a real chance that WoTC’s put some money behind getting it heavily reviewed/boosted, and so more articles about it and wider attention. That is not to undercut its quality, just that I think its layers of support. (I’ll admit there’s more than a little bit of my distrust of WoTC in that. Like after all their other scandals they need a win to try and suck newbies into the game after so much messing up. And I don’t even mean in the last year or something, their release quality for 5e has been abysmal for a long time.)

Additionally Larian played the early access thing very well. Not only did they listen to their ongoing players, and even netted some “tried it didn’t like it” people back, it gave time for everyone who was perhaps too into the older isometric BG1&2 titles (like me) to realize the game didn’t seem quite like it was for them and not pick it up. So you get clear, mostly good(if outdated) information out there for people to use in researching if they wanted to buy it, helping to avoid a lot of the knee-jerk hate that stuff like Fallout 4 and 76 got from misplaced expectations that could dull the release.