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I feel I should point out that, historically, Dinosaurs were less inclined to entering deep water then to taking to the air. There were multiple ocean going predators that would make short work of most Dinosaurs, while there were many species of both gliding and flying Dinosaurs from the early Cretaceous Period through to today.....

That said, even a massively upgraded T-Rex would be hard pressed to face off against any Dragon, if only because the animal is still one of the dumbest animal predators on the planet, and any basic tactics in the application of a Dragon's Breath Weapon would totally wreck the poor dumb beast, never mind any actual magic.....

(I looked up the current stats for a T-Rex. Just to put things in perspective, despite having over a hundred HP, a fairly decent AC, and a bite attack that averages around 48 points of damage, the T-Rex is a Challenge Rating 8 monster. An arcane spell caster with average con and perfect HP rolls at level 8 would have 32 HP. A rogue would have 48. A cleric would have 64, and a frontline warrior class like a fighter or paladin would have 80, plus con bonuses If They Have Perfect HP Die Rolls. This means a T-Rex should be able to drop half the party with one attack each, and they can make two attacks at a time (Bite and Tail Strike). So, why is the Challenge Ratting so low, when one of these should be a total party wipe in a straight up fight? Because the average Camp Fire can out think a T-Rex, much less a fairly experienced Adventuring Party....)
 
FaerieKnight79 said:
That is a lovely little tale.
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It's awful.

In a relationship there may be some secrets. But "I killed your best friends, and also, I'm a member of a group which usually has great enmity towards your kind" really shouldn't be one of them, and the whole thing is fundamentally based on deception.

"I'm so in love that I'm going to hide the truth from him so he doesn't hate me" is a very human thing to do, even for a dragon. But it's dysfunctional.
 
The backstory, left out of that fireside tale, was that the dragon had been divinely cursed. Given the nature of the dragons of my campaign world, she'd pissed off a god someplace; more than likely the patron deity of one of the husband's companions. Powers and memories sealed, she had no idea of what and who she was until the curse was lifted as her husband lay dying. Afterwards, after looking back at her extremely long life, and not liking what she was seeing for all but the last thirty years, she flew out of the tales of mortals, presumably to face judgement for her deeds.
 
DestinyPlayer said:
A small note: Russians actually conjugate their names and surnames. So it should probably be "Kira Aleshina", aka the female conjugation of "Aleshin".
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Not exactly. Verbs are conjugated. Names should be treated as nouns (or rather a noun is a name), and nouns are declined (See definition 5). Also, although at this point it seems like ancient history to me, I vaguely remember from a Russian class I took that surnames ending in "-ski" ("-skaya" in the feminine) are the adjectival forms of place names. Adjectives are also declined.

Of course, now I'm wondering what Kira's patronymic is although it wouldn't surprise me if her records show something dull, conventional, and not at all draconic. Also, I get the impression that draconic names are often a mouthful without tacking "-ovna" to the end (or "-ovich" for guys).
 
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tortiecat said:
Of course, now I'm wondering what Kira's patronymic is although it wouldn't surprise me if her records show something dull, conventional, and not at all draconic. Also, I get the impression that draconic names are often a mouthful without tacking "-ovna" to the end (or "-ovich" for guys).
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I get the feeling she's been Ivanova for centuries, if only because I feel like it's the russian equivalent to "Smith"

That and she'd share a last name with Susan Ivanova.
 
I'm curious about all this talk of dungeons and dragons. I've never played before, and dont have anyone around I can play with, so I have three questions. One where can I find the rules? Two, is there anywhere online i can play? And three is it possible to have a character that is under a curse that turns him from a male human, to a shrunken female catgirl, specifically one small enough to be unaware swallowed, but have the curse force him/her to survive, being swallowed or crushed while feeling all the pain and have to go on a long quest to either cure the curse or control the curse(gaining the ability to swap between the two forms as needed) or would that be illegal, since again I have never played.
 
Storyreader21 said:
I'm curious about all this talk of dungeons and dragons. I've never played before, and dont have anyone around I can play with, so I have three questions. One where can I find the rules? Two, is there anywhere online i can play? And three is it possible to have a character that is under a curse that turns him from a male human, to a shrunken female catgirl, specifically one small enough to be unaware swallowed, but have the curse force him/her to survive, being swallowed or crushed while feeling all the pain and have to go on a long quest to either cure the curse or control the curse(gaining the ability to swap between the two forms as needed) or would that be illegal, since again I have never played.
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This website should help you learn more.
For playing it online, i recommend roll20. They're free and have a fairly understandable set up along with integrated character sheets for a lot of different systems.
For the cursed item, thats up to your GM, but theres nothing that says it explicitly can't work. Well, except for the catgirl part. But thats just because the game lacks them in the first place. A cursed item that turns you into another race is perfectly doable within fhe rules.
 
Crazael said:
This website should help you learn more.
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That's 5th Edition, which is basically 3rd Edition Light (or 3e For Dummies, basically).

It's good for beginners. Not so much if you want a more robust system with a lot more meat to it.

The Hypertext d20 SRD (v3.5 d20 System Reference Document) :: d20srd.org has the main rules for 3rd edition (mainly 3.5, although there is some 3.0 in there, as well). It's what this story uses.

4th Edition... We don't really talk about 4e.
 
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Lycanthromancer said:
That's 5th Edition, which is basically 3rd Edition Light (or 3e For Dummies, basically).

It's good for beginners. Not so much if you want a more robust system with a lot more meat to it.
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If i were gonna recommend anything but the current, best supported, and easiest to find games, i would have suggested 4e. But since the request was specifically someone looking to get into it and actually play, i figured id go with the one most likely to yeild results.
 
Crazael said:
This website should help you learn more.
For playing it online, i recommend roll20. They're free and have a fairly understandable set up along with integrated character sheets for a lot of different systems.
For the cursed item, thats up to your GM, but theres nothing that says it explicitly can't work. Well, except for the catgirl part. But thats just because the game lacks them in the first place. A cursed item that turns you into another race is perfectly doable within fhe rules.
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Lycanthromancer said:
That's 5th Edition, which is basically 3rd Edition Light (or 3e For Dummies, basically).

It's good for beginners. Not so much if you want a more robust system with a lot more meat to it.
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Thanks. I'll check it out.
 
Crazael said:
If i were gonna recommend anything but the current, best supported, and easiest to find games, i would have suggested 4e. But since the request was specifically someone looking to get into it and actually play, i figured id go with the one most likely to yeild results.
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This story uses 3e, not 5e.

And 5e is basically My First Tabletop RPG, a watered-down version of 3e. Easier to learn, but it isn't nearly as robust.
 
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I like 3.5 more than I like 5e, but personally I prefer Pathfinder 1e over both. (We don't talk about Pathfinder 2e, tis a silly silly place)

Another place to play online is Myth-Weavers, which is more purely Play By Post than Roll20, which is more designed for the tactical map side of things than the descriptive side of things.
 
....... If I say I still have a fondness for first and second edition, and overall dislike the reworking that is third edition and up, then I will be facing down a lynch mob, won't I? Even if it is true.........
 
Jacen1 said:
....... If I say I still have a fondness for first and second edition, and overall dislike the reworking that is third edition and up, then I will be facing down a lynch mob, won't I? Even if it is true.........
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My negative opinion of Tattletale has gotten me threadbanned before, so I understand @Jacen1

Even so, this is derailment....
 
Jacen1 said:
....... If I say I still have a fondness for first and second edition, and overall dislike the reworking that is third edition and up, then I will be facing down a lynch mob, won't I? Even if it is true.........
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I am, for one, entirely unconcerned about your opinion of which edition is best. Just as I am with that of anyone else. The only opinion on the subject I am at all concerned about is that of the group I play with. Some of which are distressingly unwilling to try anything but 5th.
 
Valdimarian said:
I like 3.5 more than I like 5e, but personally I prefer Pathfinder 1e over both. (We don't talk about Pathfinder 2e, tis a silly silly place)

Another place to play online is Myth-Weavers, which is more purely Play By Post than Roll20, which is more designed for the tactical map side of things than the descriptive side of things.
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And I prefer Dungeon Crawl Classic to either of those but tough luck there.
 
To clarify : Whoever said that this story uses whatever rules from whatever edition that fits the author's/story's needs best has it mostly correct. I've used a mish-mash of rules to help define what the protagonist can do, but as the story advances, the rules get left farther and farther behind. 3.5 and 5th edition are what I'm fiddling around with. On top of that, I went and completely broke things anyway, and gave the protagonist a parahuman power - administrative control over energy doing work within a range of 300m/1000'... and this includes MAGIC (think 5e's sorcery points and meta-magic, on any spell).
 
Lycanthromancer said:
I have just one word for you:

THAC0.
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ThAC0 was easier than having to right down 21 numbers, from 10 to -10, and then apply all the modifiers for the weapon against each entry (D&D 0e, AD&D 1e). I dealt with that from '76 to '84. I will agree that making the Armor class the number you have to beat to hit for various conditions is a simpler system than that, but the point remains that the current armor class is simply an umodified THAC0, pre-computed at all steps.

@Leechblade : While D&D discussions are a tangent, they're hardly a derails, more like we got switched onto a side track. A derail would be debating which would win in a dogfight with a dragon : F-14 Tomcat, F-16 Fighting Falcon, or A-10 Thunderbolt II.

But be of good cheer! Normal posting resumes Saturday!
 
Jacen1 said:
....... If I say I still have a fondness for first and second edition, and overall dislike the reworking that is third edition and up, then I will be facing down a lynch mob, won't I? Even if it is true.........
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I love those systems. THAC0 was the greatest thing in the world.

The only reason I play 3.5 more than anything else is because there are so many splatbooks for OGLD20 in the 3.5 version. There is literally nothing you can't do in 3.5, if your GM will allow it.
 
Valdimarian said:
I get the feeling she's been Ivanova for centuries, if only because I feel like it's the russian equivalent to "Smith"

That and she'd share a last name with Susan Ivanova.
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Except that I was asking about Kira's patronymic. She has a surname, Aleshina.

Patronymics are effectively Russian middle names and are formed by taking the father's name and adding one of two suffixes to it, "-ovich" for males and "-ovna" for females, thus if the father's name is Ivan, the female patronymic would Ivanovna (Note the extra letter there). Piotr changes to "Petr-" when being turned into a patronymic, and the suffixes change slightly if the father's name is Sergei or Andrei.

"Ivanova" is the Babylone 5 2IC's surname. Her patronymic is Andreyevna because her father's name was Andrei.

Kira has two options for a patronymic, pick an ordinary Russian male name and add "-ovna" to it or find a way to make her father's name sound plausibly Russian before adding the suffix.
 
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