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 Iirc there was a min 1 damage even for negative strength modifiers but DR superseded that.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.

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.

Thank you, I think that helps parse out where I was unclear. There’s specifics in the language at play. It makes me wonder how often bad actors prevention of even small distinctions being discussed has made it muddier and harder for everyone else.

I guess my question’s always been that since gender is (to my incomplete understanding) a social construct and can change, and transgender people seek to change to a gender that feels more appropriate, how did you (a) know what felt right, (b) that what felt right wasn’t completely appropriate for your gender and the active definition of gender needed to change, and © where does chemical and surgical transition factor in for a gender based thing when attempting to find for comfortable self? Because that seems like a sex (in the clinical terminology) thing as much as a gender one (which of course there’s probably a connection, I guess I’m just not clear where the line really breaks.)

To be clear, I think my questions are entirely too “rationalizing a deep emotional and person thing” so I don’t really expect an answer, I’ve just never been invited to address the question to anyone before.

I mean, your argument is “we can’t ever be perfect so we should never even aspire to be good”, which is sortof putting the cart before the horse. That we can even recognize the distinction of not being special already places in a position where we can try and do a little better. What is better, how much, or how? What even is good or morality? All of those questions are at necessity to even define good, let alone become it. Before even glancing at perfect. Sure it might be an eternal inane treadmill, but just as fish have gills to breathe, we by chance of fate have the organs necessary to think. And that’s just as much in our nature. The fish doesn’t consider how long it has to swim, it just does it towards a target it can see/sense. By the same mechanism that means we aren’t special, why shouldn’t, why wouldn’t, we do the same thing? Just because what we can see/sense may be artificial, imagined, or drempt?

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.