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The Power(Harry Potter/The Gamer)

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You misunderstand me.

I'm fine with Magic of the Multiverse. In fact, I enjoy it as it was used up till now.

But as more and more people are starting to suggest different books we could read for kewl abilatas, I worry this quest will get bogged down just like Grind did (or will).

My point is, the focus of the quest shouldn't be about what cool new ability Harry should get next.

It's over as soon as the means become the ends. Don't lose track of the plot!
 
*shrug* We're not; we're trying to entertain ourselves and plan for the future while Halpo133 is gone. Frankly we've been planning this stuff for a while now.

GM has veto power on everything and in whatever quest is the final arbiter of good sense.
 
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SonOfNenji said:
You misunderstand me.

I'm fine with Magic of the Multiverse. In fact, I enjoy it as it was used up till now.

But as more and more people are starting to suggest different books we could read for kewl abilatas, I worry this quest will get bogged down just like Grind did (or will).

My point is, the focus of the quest shouldn't be about what cool new ability Harry should get next.

It's over as soon as the means become the ends. Don't lose track of the plot!
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Eh, it pretty much happens all the time when the QM issues an open check for adding fiction power sources.
 
I think one thing that would help make the skills we get more interesting would be if we remembered to use them. Think about it; one of the first spells we learned was the Speak to Animals spell, and we've used it a grand total of zero times. Just think about all the stuff Halpo could come up with if we used it. What kind of quests could we get talking to animals? Or what kind of interaction could we get? There is so much we could do with it, but we've just ignored it.

I don't mind grabbing more abilities from different settings. The only thing I want is to make sure that we use anything we get.
 
I think Harry's been using it, just not much on-screen as it were.

The only animal he'd really have a chance to use it on would be Hedwig, and Wormtail, and he 'Detect Evil'ed Wormtail before he could strike up a conversation.

Maybe, Harry could use the Write spell so that he can give all the students the Find Familiar spell.

I wonder, could Harry turn Dobby into a familiar? I know that imps and brownies were considered acceptable Familiars to the spell, and House Elves are probably close enough to Brownies for the spell to work.
 
I wonder how The Gamer would interpret the house elf bond.

And yes, it would certainly be okay to add abilities if we actually use them.

No need to act like Dudley with his toys...
 
What really interested me was that when we first tried talking to Hedwig, it was shown that she was clearly sapient. That made me curious about how that happened. Does this mean the animals (since I imagine it will be true for all other animals) have always been sapient? I don't find this likely, since otherwise it would have been apparent long before now. Does it mean they became sapient the moment we gained our powers (or, at least, that specific ability)? Again, I doubt this is correct, since we would have heard or noticed animals starting to behave much differently. The only other option I can think of is that each animal becomes sapient when we use the ability to talk to them for the first time. Again, though, even this option doesn't seem likely because Hedwig didn't seem surprised at suddenly speaking to us.

Then again, we tried talking to her in the middle of a fight. In fact, that was one update I really didn't care for. It felt like the update was almost mocking us for trying to talk to Hedwig by forcing us to do it in the middle of a fight. Not only that, but why wouldn't we have talked to her immediately after the fight, like she asked? It seems like the moment we finished the story just pretended the interaction never happened.

Anyway, I agree with DragonBard. As soon as we get the next update, I say we make it a priority to talk with Hedwig. If nothing else, it will be very interesting to get closer with our familiar, and there might be some information we can learn from her (such as when she became sapient, or if she always had been that way).
 
EasyCo said:
since we would have heard or noticed animals starting to behave much differently.
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How would they behave differently? DO you think they would suddenly start wearing clothes? I have no idea how you expect them to behave if they just gained sapience.
I'd think they would continue acting just the same. Personally, I view the idea of sapience as a sham, especially since I can't find a good definition for Sapience unlike for Life or Sentience.
 
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Animals aren't sapient; post owls are specifically smarter than regular animals and if you go and read the stuff on speak with animals you'll learn lots of things about how and why it works. Animals normally have an intelligence under 6 in D&D terms.

Normally it's only asking questions and receiving answers from the critters, those with an alignment close enough may also be asked to do small tasks.

Animals run on instinct as does anything with Intelligence under 6 in D&D - there's a reason that Int should not be a dump stat. Your Int goes below six and you're an NPC.

Post Owls are likely from a superior bloodline and have more intelligence via spell or something, then again Hedwig is a familiar and was shown to be gaining Intelligence when she was levelling and stuff (she showed stat gains across the board I believe).

I wasn't real happy with that update myself because the talking was during combat instead of when it would be useful, but the question of animal sapience isn't where I'd go with that.
 
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Godogma said:
Animals aren't sapient; post owls are specifically smarter than regular animals and if you go and read the stuff on speak with animals you'll learn lots of things about how and why it works. Animals normally have an intelligence under 6 in D&D terms.
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3, animals have an intelligent under 3 in dnd, which is the point of sapience.
A clever animal would have high wisdom
 
Dogs have from 2-4 Intelligence and there are outliers with up to 6, which is why I said what I did.

(Unless you consider the Cat entries which are really strange; seems like two different people were statting them up in places and they didn't bother to talk to each other.)

Full sapience in Monstrous Manual terms is around 8-10 where alignments other than True Neutral begin to appear.
 
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Last I heard animal intelligence was between 1~2, with 3 being the minimum necessary for sapience, although the result would be really, really dumb.
 
Godogma said:
Dogs have from 2-4 Intelligence and there are outliers with up to 6, which is why I said what I did.
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No they can't
Dog, Common - Pathfinder_OGC
Dog :: d20srd.org
dogs have an int of 2, which they should because they are animals
Celestial dogs have an int 3, making them sapient but really dumb (celestial as a template actually mandates that min int is 3, and comes with the ability to speak languages)

also
The Basics :: d20srd.org
Intelligence (Int)

Intelligence determines how well your character learns and reasons. This ability is important for wizards because it affects how many spells they can cast, how hard their spells are to resist, and how powerful their spells can be. It's also important for any character who wants to have a wide assortment of skills.
You apply your character's Intelligence modifier to:
A wizard gains bonus spells based on her Intelligence score. The minimum Intelligence score needed to cast a wizard spell is 10 + the spell's level.
An animal has an Intelligence score of 1 or 2. A creature of humanlike intelligence has a score of at least 3.
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mrttao said:
No they can't
Dog, Common - Pathfinder_OGC
Dog :: d20srd.org
dogs have an int of 2, which they should because they are animals
Celestial dogs have an int 3, making them sapient but really dumb (celestial as a template actually mandates that min int is 3, and comes with the ability to speak languages)

also
The Basics :: d20srd.org
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For your information, this is from 2nd Edition - the same place all Harry's spells come from. WotC published 3e then 3.5 and then the d20SRD some 12 years after (at LEAST) the material Harry's spells come from.

Aka you need to go buy a book to quote at me; and since I got it out of the book to start with you would have a hard time gainsaying me. The D20SRD or the OGC Pathfinder have NOTHING TO DO WITH IT.

Especially since they were published by two different companies even than the books his abilities come from. I'm quoting TSR not WotC or Paizo (I think? For Pathfinder?)

Tada. Countered your arguments handily.

EDIT: Now, none of this actually has any bearing on Harry and Hedwig because neither stat system is what's actually being used by Halpo133 for the Quest which runs on a form of Gamer mechanics.
 
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Hmm. We did use speak to animals once with Hedwig, but she didn't have much to say during the zombie battle. Made sense, though we didn't talk to her post-battle like she asked. Ugh. We really need to talk to our familar again.

Hmm, I dunno. Maybe the spell just confers it on to them for the duration of the spell. Sentient animals would act differently than normal. No that does not mean clothes. Then again, Snakes always seem smarter than then should in Potterverse, and with parseltongue... well.

I wonder how well that spell would work with an Animagus. We should ask Prof Mcgonagall to test it with us! :D
 
Mandabar said:
Sentient animals would act differently than normal.
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The word you are wanting is sapient. Animals are sentient.
And, again, how would they act differently? Why would they not continue doing exactly what they were before? Increased intelligence? I'm fairly certain it's less them being smarten-ed up to the point of understanding human speech, and more Harry learning animal speech (handily translated to English for us muggles) for short periods of time.
 
Oops, thought I did use sapient. Damn fingers typing different words than I'm thinking.

And for the short duration of the spell, I think they would be sapient and able to reason and carry out tasks beyond the ability of a normal non-sapient animal. Basicly Human like for the duration of the spell and task if beyond duration.
Trondason said:
I'm fairly certain it's less them being smarten-ed up to the point of understanding human speech, and more Harry learning animal speech (handily translated to English for us muggles) for short periods of time.
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That is also a quite valid interpretation of it as well.

I think the snakes in potterverse are always sapient... or it applies after talking to a parseltongue.
 
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Mandabar said:
And for the short duration of the spell, I think they would be sapient and able to reason and carry out tasks beyond the ability of a normal non-sapient animal. Basicly Human like for the duration of the spell and task if beyond duration.
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I dunno. Animals are smarter than people generally give them credit for. The most common example is all the shit Crows get up to. Example, not only can a crow hold a grudge, they can work together to get revenge against the person.
Mandabar said:
That is also a quite valid interpretation of it as well.
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The reason I think that is because it's a spell cast on us, not on the animal. During it's duration, we can talk to all animals equally well, and during the conversation no-one else can understand anything the animal is saying (Dunno if our half is english, or animal noises though).
 
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Godogma said:
For your information, this is from 2nd Edition - the same place all Harry's spells come from. WotC published 3e then 3.5 and then the d20SRD some 12 years after (at LEAST) the material Harry's spells come from.
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alright, sorry, I mixed this up with a different The Gamer quest.

That being said, in 2nd edition non magical dogs have an int score of
Semi- (2-4)
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as per monsterous manual

And as per PHB the spell Animal Friendship
By means of this spell, the caster is able to show any animal of animal intelligence to
semi-intelligence (i.e., Intelligence 1-4)
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So claiming dogs have 6 int is incorrect there as well.

Although as per PHB table 4 (intelligence)
An int score of 1 gives you the ability to speak 0* languages
*While unable to speak a language, the character can still communicate by grunts and
gestures.
While an int score of 2-8 gives you the ability to speak 1 language. So now we know that every dog can speak one language

Also here is the snippet about intelligence for characters
This ability gives only a general indication of a character's mental acuity. A semi-
intelligent character (Int 3 or 4) can speak (with difficulty) and is apt to react instinctively
and impulsively. He is not hopeless as a player character (PC), but playing such a
character correctly is not easy. A character with low Intelligence (Int 5-7) could also be
called dull-witted or slow. A very intelligent person (Int 11 or 12) picks up new ideas
quickly and learns easily. A highly intelligent character (Int 13 or 14) is one who can
solve most problems without even trying very hard. One with exceptional intelligence
(Int 15 or 16) is noticeably above the norm. A genius character is brilliant (Int 17 or 18).
A character beyond genius is potentially more clever and more brilliant than can possibly
be imagined
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highlighted is the intelligence of all non magical dogs in 2e dnd. magical dogs are smarter
 
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I said there were outliers with around 6, the blink dog has 8-10 and it's in the same entry... And there are some that aren't in the Monstrous Manual that only have higher Int and no magical abilities so couldn't be termed as magical.

Some entries on the Cooshie (elven dog) has it as being highly intelligent and having a funny colored coat but no magic; though there is more than one entry on that one so it's been retconned a few times/altered by different books.

There are a mess of contradictions in 2e in places where I think the authors didn't bother to talk to each other and get their shit straight that the line editor missed.
 
At any rate, if all animals are sapient it turns the quest into Harry Potter: The Vegetarian.

Except, Speak with Plants also exists, so it becomes Harry Potter: The Artificial Foodstuffs Synthesis and Duplication Researcher.

"Voldemort! I won't forgive your crimes, but since you returned from the dead you haven't needed to slaughter nearly as many innocents - join me and we can free the world from the horrors of consumption!"

Unless most animals and plants are assholes - and let's face it, this is probably true - in which case, screw them.
 
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