this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2024
863 points (98.3% liked)

RPGMemes

10420 readers
350 users here now

Humor, jokes, memes about TTRPGs

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
(page 2) 41 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 58 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I spent thirteen years growing bonsai, fifteen pining over Loravindrel. That brought me into my eight year long emo-goth period which produced poetry I've since fed to the flames. For sixteen seasons after that I meditaed under a plum tree and swept the eight hundred and seventy two dozen and five stars. Six years I practiced the letter œ to master the uhm. Fifty seven years I spent in the arms of Madeleine and our oldest grandchild is about your age. And the last three seasons I've been chasing the south-western gale that robbed her from me decades too early.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (5 children)

Dude, what's even your job? How did you make a living for 106 years just sitting around?

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 45 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Now I have the idea of a level 7 elf wizard but he's also like level 20 fighter and he just wanted to re-spec

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 months ago (2 children)

It would be funny if, after a certain point in their life, elves learning one thing made them forget another thing.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 months ago

It's like Pokemon. You only get four skill slots.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago

I think I might be that kind of elf.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Sorta turns the AD&D mechanic on its head. And it makes more sense than the way it was done in AD&D - I like it!

Context: in AD&D, humans could “dual class,” which is similar to what you described - effectively retiring in one class and beginning to advance in another - and non-humans could “multi-class,” where they gained experience in two or more classes at the same time, leveling more slowly but getting the benefits of both classes.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Further context, assuming the ruleset governing the OG Baldurs Gate games was true to the tabletop (I know they sort of kludged AD&D and aspects of 3e together). As the above said, a dual classed human "retires" their original class, and then begins to advance in their new class, essentially starting over from level 1, with only the hit dice and HP of their original class rolled over (you cannot access any of the class abilities you learned while advancing your original class). However, once your new class level is superior to your original class level, you can now access both skill sets.

It's a very strange system, and I am curious what the fluff reasons surrounding it are, if anyone has any insight into that edition.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I remember it being especially bizarre because it basically means going through a large portion of the game with a more or less useless character soaking up xp, after which you either have a slightly less useless underlevelled character or one that's brokenly OP depending on how you planned out the combo. And if you dual class too late you just never get to that point and it's all drawback no benefit.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

1/10th life Crisis

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 months ago

Human discovers how to start a ~~bar~~ tavern fight in one easy step

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Eh, most levelling systems are totally unrealistic and it's best not to think about them too much. If I had to explain them, I would say that at the start of the campaign, the PCs were blessed by the gods with tremendous innate talent. It doesn't matter if one PC had a hundred more years of experience than another because until the campaign started, none of the PCs were talented enough to be extraordinarily good at anything.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

But it's so much funnier to picture elves as spending 40 years in diapers.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 months ago

"Look, I took a gap decade or two, okay?"

[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 months ago

Elves are probably like that ghoul, Calamity, from New Vegas. Every decade or so, she just picks a new name and job or she gets bored.

[–] [email protected] 115 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (4 children)

I like to think Elves go on an adventure at around age 70-90, get really super cool, take 100 years off, and then completely forget all their amazing skills because they've been learning the language of bees or doing sequoia trimming as a hobby for the last century.

Would be a cute fluffy class feature to just assign the very old elf an exceptionally difficult but totally useless skill at near-master level, to help explain why the Legendary Warrior of Old is now swinging for the minor leagues.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Last century? Most lore has them in the range of 1000 years to immortal.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

In D&D, elves don't typically get several thousand years old.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I think there's also a fun opportunity for the world to just evolve a lot in that time. Like, you were a wizard 100 years ago, but then spells were super different and way less powerful, so now you get to relearn the newer better spells and casting techniques. I imagine it'd be like learning to programming 50 years ago and then starting again now

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Like, you were a wizard 100 years ago, but then spells were super different and way less powerful, so now you get to relearn the newer better spells and casting techniques.

That's an interesting (and very Frieren-esque) bit of world building. But it does run contrary to the generic D&D settings/multi-verse, where the same set of spells have existed for centuries and across a multitude of worlds.

"When I was your age, you needed to know 9th level spells to cast fireball" is a cute crotchety one-liner. But it's not going to make any sense when you find a 2,000 year old spellbook with Fireball at the appropriate 3rd level slot. The DM would have to do a whole mess of retconning of an existing setting / pre-written material to make it work.

I imagine it’d be like learning to programming 50 years ago and then starting again now

As someone who did learn programming roughly 40 years ago, there are definitely differences. But an if-statement is still and if-statement and a function is still a function. The libraries and syntax can change, but the basic commands are still fundamentally the same.

I would note that modern programming-as-analog-to-magic would be more akin to everyone having a magic wand in their back pocket to do a set assortment of 3rd level spells per day which they don't even really need to think about other than the command word. Meanwhile, you've got this ancient elf flipping through a spellbook and spending an hour every morning re-memorizing a boutique list of spells nobody has thought to make a wand for in half a century.

Also a very interesting spin on a D&D-esque setting. But hugely divergent from printed materials.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

An elf wrote this.

[–] [email protected] 94 points 3 months ago (4 children)

I do like the idea that elves just change their entire lifestyle every hundred years or so. They spend 80 years as a warrior, then decided to take up magic and became a wizard for the next 80 years.

I also like the idea of a human village that accidentally built 4 statues of the same elf who kept saving them with different skills.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

This also somewhat appears in the Orconomics book series (very enjoyable fantasy satire with some heart to it), where the elves in that universe are virtually immortal and don't die by aging. Instead they just slowly forget their previous lives if they live that long.

One of the main characters is an Elf who used to be an adventurer of great renown, but is a bit washed up and is constantly comparing themselves with the legends of what they used to be. Also applies that if you were an Elven prince or princess, eventually you age out and get moved lower socially to any newer born royalty.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago (1 children)

There's a series of books called The Legend of Drizzt last time I checked (it's changed over the years, and the first book wasn't even supposed to be about him lmao) and in one of the books, our main character believes he has lost all his friends (not a spoiler, we already know who is okay and who isn't when he thinks this) and so he goes off alone into the mountains to kill orcs and goblins and shit until he maybe dies. A couple of elves way older than him meet him at one point, and since this is really the first time he's spent with elves long term since he left his underground homeland decades before, he doesn't really know "how to be an elf".

This is basically their philosophy.

Elves can live over a thousand years (one dark elf we know of is blessed by their evil deity and is over 5,000), but dwarves only about 2-400 years (I think?) and half lings about 100-150ish, humans standard 80.

Since you will lose 10 sets of "lifelong friends" at least, if they're human, many elves choose to stick with other elves.

But those that mingle, tend to segment their lives into smaller chunks.

Don't try to live your life all thousand years in one go, you will lose so much by doing so.

But if you think of your life as more "this is me now, I am very different from the person who wore this outfit 5 years ago, and this is who I will be for the next 100 years" then it becomes more manageable.

You never forget the friends and family you made in an old life, but you cannot carry your grief over losing them for the rest of your life.

Those that do end up sticking to their own kind, because it's less painful. (and also superiority complexes)

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I had a character who's backstory wasn't too far off from that. The career changes weren't entirely voluntary, though, and usually were because he had suddenly lost all his money and needed to go adventuring again to rebuild his wealth. By the time the campaign was set, he was close to a millennium old, borderline senile, and making some very outrageous claims about things he had supposedly done in the past, like getting into a bar fight with Selune during the Time of Troubles or having once dated Lolth.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I feel like that campaign is just begging for Lolth to show up and just be like "I see you've done... well for yourself. Are you going to introduce me to your new friends or...?"

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago

The Lolth thing turned out to be a misunderstanding with a Drider. The character was not high WIS or INT.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Kinda-sorta the premise of the anime Frieren.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Of the three elves we've met so far (there might be one or two other minor ones in flashbacks) only Kraft can be said to have changed class (warrior to monk), and that was centuries before the time of the series at the earliest, and due to a crisis of faith (and possibly a midlife crisis, or the elven equivalent of one).

The other two have spent at least a thousand years focusing on very specific skillsets (and in Serie's case complaining about how humans don't live long enough to gain proper expertise at their crafts)...

The premise of the series is Frieren learning to appreciate her friends despite their short lives (well, the original premise was a cute immortal terrifying demon killing machine of an elf, according to the author, but it sort of evolved from that)... but when it comes to the nature of elves and how they learn, it's pretty much the absolute opposite of this.

Both Frieren and Serie would be extremely offended at the mere suggestion that they might possibly ever forget anything, and Kraft would probably be disappointed but understanding.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Both Frieren and Serie would be extremely offended at the mere suggestion that they might possibly ever forget anything

Series, definitely. But Frieren struggles to remember old things all the time.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

What. She's basically got photographic memory. The whole series is built on flashbacks to her memories.

She's dense as fuck when it comes to interacting with people, sure (though she's been getting better), possibly due to being an elf, possibly due to having spent most of her life alone in the woods, and she's extremely disorganised, but she remembers perfectly every single word of conversations held a thousand years ago.

Remember the sour grapes, remember her conversation with Old Man Voll when she was offended at the suggestion of her possibly not remembering until she realised he really was senile, remember how she could tell that the steaks in the restaurant tasted different than they had over eighty years before.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 months ago

Both the anime and the manga are fantastic.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 3 months ago (5 children)

What’s an appropriately Elvish way to say “Now listen here, you little shit.”?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

You wouldn't understand, spoon ear.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago

"I'm sure you're too immature to appreciate this, but..."

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 months ago

Cast thine undivided attention upon me, whelp.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I read the comment talking about New Vegas and then I misread this one as "Elvis" and for a few seconds it made sense to me.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Some mods let you play aa a ghoul, making you just as functionally immortal as an elf, if slightly less pretty.

So yeah, making fun of immortals for only being lvl 7 works in the Fallout universe too 😁

[–] [email protected] 37 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Embrace the wisdom of the immortal's experience, you little shit.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 3 months ago

Be sure to throw “spoon-eared fuck” in there too.

load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›