enginecrankdnd

[enginecrankdnd]

In the tabletop shop, straight crankin it. And by it, well let’s justr say, my dnd engine

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(See pfp)

The Entirety of Tumblr from Tumblr has been Chucked in to the ocean! You're all wet now.

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Mkay but my sword is Sting but for Fae instead of Greenskins.

And it can most certainly count as both the most refined iron ever and a stake. Nether of you are succeeding.

We need to start disguising ourselves as those bloodsuckers. Because then folks start thinking "ooh, I just won't let them in my house", but nope, that's poor guest behavior, you're now a puppet. It's genius!

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Only if you have adamantite to pay me with.

would anyone be interested in patting me on the head for an uninterrupted hour? it is not paid and additionally I will be nonverbal the entire time

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Clever…. Very clever… Thank you, sir.

Keeping you up to date on the latest on their trickery, stay careful out there, kids.

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What the sneef?!

IM SNORFIN HERE!!

black and rufous sengi faces...

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Neutralize Force

4th lvl Abjuration

Wizard/Scorcerer

Components: V/S/M (a set of iron manacles)

Casting Time: 1 action

Duration: 30 seconds

Choose a target you can see. They must succeed a DC 11 Con save, or become unable to move for 30 seconds. This immobilization includes these effects:

The target’s speed drops to 0

The target becomes unable to attack

The target becomes unable to perform somatic spell components.

The target automatically fails all physical (Str, Dex, and Con) checks that require movement.

If the target is still effected at the start of its turn, it can roll the check again to escape early.

For every level this spell is upcasted, the check gains one DC

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FUCK

Heard that berries are good this year. Bog if true

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Sandy Gale

2nd lvl Evocation

Sorcerer/Druid

Components: Somatic

Casting time: 1 action

Duration: 10 minutes

Choose a square area, 10 ft to a side, and a Cardinal or Orthogonal direction. In that area, harsh winds blow small grains of sand in the specified direction. When a creature enters that area, or starts their turn there, they must make a DC 13 Con save. On a fail, they take 2d6 piercing dmg, or the higher d6 on a success. If they move with the wind, they gain 5 ft of movement, in that direction, to be used in that movement or lost. If they are moving against the wind, they instead lose 5ft of movement, and become blinded if they fail the above Con save.

For every level that this spell is upcasted, it gains a damage die, and the successful save also gains the next highest d6.

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Throngle

5th lvl Transmutation

Casting Time: Instant

Range: Yes

Components: A 1-pound piece of handwavium

Duration: Variable

Classes: All pure casters

Choose a target. It becomes Throngled.

(The DM decides what exactly it means to be Throngled. Alternatively, roll on the wild magic table.)

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Evoke Energy

9th lvl Evocation

Casting Time: 1 action

Range: 30sq, 120 line

Components: V, S, M (A major source of every kind of energy (determined by dm))

Duration: 2 rounds

The caster holds their hands in front of itself, as though they were clutching a large sphere with all their might, and begins to chant. A pitch black sphere grows between them, and begins to absorb every mote of energy within 30 ft. Every creature within 30 ft, at the start of their next turn, regardless of species or abilities, including the caster, must succeed a DC18 Con save, or take 20d20 necrotic damage and lose all energy, with all the statuses and effects the DM decides that entails. Additionally, everything else in that area also has its energy absorbed, and the area becomes completely still, freezing cold, completely silent, and immutably dark (only true sight can pierce immutable darkness), and all spells cast in or into the area are immediately absorbed.

The next time it is the caster’s turn, they release the stored energy in a 15ft width, 120ft length, 10ft height beam. Every creature within that beam takes 20d20 force dmg.

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(You may want to read my masterpost for context. This post is from the pov of Phillip Charactus.)

Funny thing about that is that I will destroy you if you try to take this man.

@voices-from-the-faerelm

Heard that berries are good this year. Bog if true

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ENGINECRANKDND MASTERPOST

Most of this blog will be dumb ideas and stupid jokes, but some of it may be in character. I only have one PC right now, but there will be more.

Phillip Charactus:

Human Fighter 8/Paladin 4

Racist to fae, because his fiancé enthralled his town and he was the only survivor. Notable abilities include:

Fred, a talking longsword that cuts magic and is bound to a staff named Gorge. Yes, like the Weasleys.

Shock and Awe, a Darth Maul style double sided shortsword. It deals double shortsword damage, double shortsword damage again but thunder this time, and also a mental version of restrained called dancing.

Ron, a tower shield embodiment saws with the visage of Bahamut. There is a red gem in Bahamut’s open maw, dead center on the shield, that grants fire immunity to the weilder.

Whistle Daggers, throwing daggers with a gimmick of their hit roll being contested by a perception check rather than enemy AC

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@bettinalevyisdetermined

i hate it when i cant even write a poem about something because its too obvious. like in the airbnb i was at i guess it used to be a kids room cause you could see the imprint of one little glow in the dark star that had been missed and painted over in landlord white. like that's a poem already what's the point

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Is it so important tho? My lich boss does without…

blood is like this red water thats really important

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Correct, he’s a half king, actually.

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We’ll see about who’s really collosally fucking stupid.

(It’s Disney. It’s always Disney. Why would Disney ever do anything smart these days, all they do is look at social trends and make an “”””””””educated”””””””” guess about how many of the trends they can double dip into in order to get more views and maximize profit. They need new execs, ones that aren’t shareholders with no emotion or concept of a cohesive plot.)

Fuck it, I didn't want to make a post on this but it's bugging the hell out of me so let's exorcize the thought.

Lilo and Stitch is an extremely good children's movie. I've been working at a daycare for over five years now, and out of all the children's movies I've shown to an auidence of twenty or so school-age kids (i.e. between the ages of 5 and 12), the only movie that's held their attention as well as Lilo and Stitch is The Emperor's New Groove, and the only one that's held it better is An American Tail. Of those three, Lilo and Stitch has won the vote of "what movie we will watch" the most. It not only entertains kids, but emotionally captivates them from start to finish, because it very thoroughly understands how to engage children on their level. It's a smart, tightly written children's movie.

The feat of story-telling genius it pulls of lies in its ability to reach both where children's imaginations want to go and where their lived real-world experiences lie - most children's movies focus on one or the other, but Lilo and Stitch dives deep into both. On the imagination side, there's Stitch's whole plotline of being a little alien monster being chased by other weirdo aliens onto earth because they want to stop him from running amok and causing havoc (which, of course, happens anyway in fun cartoony comedy/action spectacle). On the real-world side, you have Lilo's plotline of being a troubled little girl who has an abundance of very real problems that, like an actual child, she struggles to comprehend and deal with, as well as the many adults in her life that care about her to some degree but all struggle to fully understand her. Kids want to be Stitch and run amok and cause cartoony havoc. Kids, even the least-troubled kids, relate to Lilo, because all of them have been in a similar situation as her at least once in their lives.

Balancing these two very different stories, with very different tones and scopes to their respective conflicts, is a hard writing task, but Lilo and Stitch manages to do it in a way that seems effortless with one very powerful trick. The two plots are direct mirrors to each other, complete with the characters involved in each having foils in the respective plot. To break it down:

Stitch, the wild and destructive alien gremlin who everyone has labeled as a crime against existence, is Lilo, the troubled young girl who's viewed as a "problem child" by all the adults in her life. In both plotlines, Stitch and Lilo are facing the threat of being "taken away" from the life they know because they act out, and in both plotlines, we see that this is an unfathomably cruel thing to do to them and will not actually solve the problems they have.

Dr. Jumbaa, the mad scientist who made Stitch because making monsters is what mad scientists do, and who had no intentions of ever being nurturing or parental to anything or anyone in his life, is Nani, Lilo's older sister whose parents died when she was young and now is forced to act as a parental substitute despite not being mentally or emotionally prepared for that responsibility yet. Both Dr. Jumbaa and Nani are trying to get their respective wild children in line with what society wants them to be, and both are struggling hard with it because they in turn have a lot of growing to do before they can actually accomplish that.

Pleakley, the nebbish alien bureaucrat who ends up being assigned to help Dr. Jumbaa despite being mostly uninvolved in creating the whole Stitch situation, is David, the nice but mostly ineffectual guy who's crushing on Nani and wants to help her but doesn't really have much he can provide except emotional support. Ultimately Pleakley and David prove that said emotional support is a lot more helpful than it seems on the surface, as they give Jumbaa and Nani respectively a lot of the pushes they need to become better in their parental roles.

The Grand Councilwoman, who runs the society of aliens that is trying to banish Stitch forever for his crime of existing, is Cobra Bubbles, the Child Protective Services agent who is in charge of deciding whether or not Lilo needs to be taken away from her home forever for, ostensibly, her own good. Both are well-intentioned and stern, with a desire to follow the rules of society and do what procedure says is the most humane thing to do in this situation, but both lack the understanding of Stitch/Lilo's situation to actually help until the end of the movie.

Finally, we have Captain Gantu, the enforcer of the Galactic Council who is a mean, aggressive, sadistic brute but is viewed as a "good guy" by society because he plays by its rules (well, when he knows can't get away with breaking them, anyway), who is the counterpart of Myrtle, the mean, aggressive, sadistic schoolyard bully who is viewed as a "good kid" by other adults because she plays by the rules they established (well, when she knows she can't get away with breaking them, anyway). Both Gantu and Myrtle are, in truth, much nastier in temperament than Stitch and Lilo, but are better at hiding it in front of others and so get away with it, and often make Stitch and Lilo look worse in the eyes of others by provoking them to violence and then playing the victim about it - in fact, both even have the same line, "Does this look infected to you?", which they say after goading their respective wild-child victims into biting them.

The symmetry of these two plotlines allows them to actually feed into each other and build each other up instead of fighting each other for screentime. The fantastical nature of Stitch's plot adds whimsy to the far more realistic problems that Lilo faces so they don't get too heavy for the children in the audience, while the very real struggles of Lilo in her plotline bleed over into Stitch's plot and make both very emotionally poignant. When both plotlines hit their shared climax, they reach children on a emotional level few other movies can match - the terror of Lilo being taken away from her family, and the emotional complexity of that problem (Cobra Bubbles pointing to Lilo's ruined house and shouting at Nani, "IS THIS WHAT LILO NEEDS?" is so starkly real and heart-breaking), is matched and echoed in the visual splendor and mania of the spectacular no-way-this-is-going-to-work chase scene where Stitch, Nani, Jumbaa, and Pleakley all team up to rescue Lilo from Gantu.

The arcs of the characters all more or less line up. Nani confronts her own failures to be a guardian and parent to Lilo and resolves to do better and learn from her mistakes. Jumbaa, who through most of the movie protests to be evil and uncaring, nonetheless comes to not only care for Pleakley, but more importantly for Stitch too, and ends up assuming the role he never wanted but nonetheless forced himself into from the start: he is Stitch's family. Hell, the moment that reveals this is really clever - Stitch goes out into the wilderness to try and re-enact a scene from a storybook of The Ugly Duckling, hoping, in a very childish way, that his family will show up and love him. Jumbaa arrives and, coldly but not particularly cruelly, tells Stitch that he has no family - that Stitch wasn't born, but created in a lab by Jumbaa himself. But in that moment Jumbaa is proving himself wrong - because Stitch's creator, his parent, DID show up, and did exactly what happens in the story by telling Stitch the truth of what he is. It can't be a surprise, then, that later in the movie Jumbaa ends up deciding to side with Stitch, to help him save Lilo, and to stay on Earth with his child.

David and Pleakley go from being pushed away by Nani and Jumbaa respectively to essentially becoming their partners in the family. The Grand Councilwoman and Cobra Bubbles finally see how cruel their initial solution of isolating Stitch and Lilo from their family would be, and bend the rules they are supposed to enforce to protect and support this weird found family instead of breaking it apart. Gantu and Myrtle are recognized for the assholes they are and face comeuppance in the form of comedic slapstick pratfalls. And most importantly, Stitch and Lilo both get the emotional support and understanding they need to thrive and live happy lives as children should be allowed to do. It's like poetry, it rhymes.

It's a very precise, smartly written movie. It's a delicate balancing act of tone and emotions, with a very strong theme about the need for family and understanding that hits children in their hearts and imaginations. It's extremely well structured.

...

So it'd be kind of colossally fucking stupid to remake it and start fucking around with the core structure of it, chopping out pieces and completely altering others, with no real purpose beyond "Well, the executives thought it might be better if we did this."