I don’t know what Bordier butter is, but my wife and I get really fancy Irish or Amish butter, and I have recently had to start insisting that we keep some regular non-premium butter around for just this reason. It feels wasteful to grease a pan with super-fancy premium butter, or to use it in certain recipes.

Or maybe don’t Google it, but look it up on DuckDuck Go, or search the term directly on Wikipedia in the browser of your choice.

Corn on the cob? Sweet Potatoes? Peanuts? I can understand not liking leafy greens, but man, there’s a LOT of veggies out there that are pretty interesting, especially when cooked in lots of salt and butter.

ALL vegetables? That seems crazy. I don’t eat nearly as much variety of vegetables as I should, but I still eat plenty of vegetables. Potatoes are a vegetable.

When I sort my comments by “Top Week” I get stuff from 10 days ago.

Edit: Actually, no matter what time period I select, I still see old posts from 10 days ago.

I also do this. I call it the archives. It’s like the Disney vault, but for songs. I usually pull them back out in a year or two.

This particular end-boss seems very specifically designed to be “rescued” instead of killed outright. I don’t think it will feel like a letdown at all to play it out like the book recommends. It starts out as a raging monster, and gradually comes back to its senses.

Imagine you are the Avengers, and the Hulk is the end boss. The goal isn’t to kill the Hulk, the goal is to survive him long enough to get Bruce Banner back. Part of the team has to distract him and keep him from killing Natasha while she tells him that the “Sun’s getting real low…”

It doesn’t matter that one of you has the guaranteed soothing words to calm him down, you still have to survive and coordinate to even get him to listen.

So I just went and checked out the specifics of this battle, and the key phrase is “speak with empathy and compassion”. If the player doesn’t approach the character in question with actual “empathy and compassion”, then they don’t get to make the persuasion check.

If your party actually figures out that someone needs to talk to this guy, and HOW they need to talk to him, then it’s perfectly fine that they automatically succeed on the roll, as long as they let the most eloquent person in the group do the talking.

I imagine most parties will go into default “boss battle” mode and not try diplomacy at all. If you want a party to stop shooting, smiting, and casting, and instead start talking about feelings, in the middle of a boss fight, that’s going to probably take some pretty big hints by you that it’s even a possibility. If they figure it out, then they deserve to win that way.

Eloquence Bards get to treat any roll on certain charisma skills as a 10, whenever they roll less than a 10. So with expertise and high charisma they can guarantee a roll of 22 or higher in those skills related to eloquent speech.

Usually the DM can set difficulties or even decide if a roll is called for at all, but this module has a chance for diplomacy, and the corresponding DC baked in.

I agree, though, that the correct answer is “Let the eloquence bard do their thing!” The chance to talk the boss down comes in “phases” for a reason. As long as you still have to survive Phase 1 and Phase 2 before you can suggest surrender in Phase 3, you’ll still have an interesting encounter.

And there is always the possibility that by Phase 3, your bard player won’t even think about using diplomacy once the fighting has already been going for a bit.

This is how writing always was for me. I’m a lefty, and I get nasty hand cramps after a paragraph or two.

2 hour sessions can be rough. Even just bumping up to 2.5 hours feels like you get a lot more game per week. I do love how unhurried you guys are though. Sounds like everyone in your group is fully engaged and immersed.

Just make the box see-thru, duh! Problem solved, Schroedinger!

My wife suspected this about that final fight, but it goes by quickly in the theater, and unfortunately it’s streaming on one of the few services we don’t have or want to pay for, so we haven’t re-watched it in a pause-able format.

It’s a great fun movie. The plot’s great, the pacing is great, the references are great, the comedy is great. It’s a fun adventure with a relatable team of misfit heroes.

It takes some liberties with the game mechanics to accomplish this. If you can’t forgive that, you’ll have a rough time, especially if you like wildshaping druids and spellcasting bards.

The entire point of moderation is to keep horrible people from saying horrible things. Say things that communities find acceptable, or get on out of those communities.

I’m sure there are some other communities that will welcome your opinions, but you should really already know how unpopular that particular opinion is among the general population of the English-speaking world.

Rotisserie gang! We roll hard!

I know some gestures definitely aren’t. Nodding “yes” and shaking your head for “no” are not universal, nor is the “come here” motion or motions for eating or drinking.

One thing that IS universal is throwing your hands up in celebration of a victory. The thing boxers do at the end of a match. Even blind people who have never seen that gesture do it instinctively.

Aha. I thought it was a video game controller.

Seconding Otter Pops. But I had totally forgotten Alexander the Grape until you said it.

I feel personally attacked right now.