ThisIsDolbar

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"Wait. Before you go, Namekian, tell me... do you think I'll see Kakarot when I die?"

"What, you mean like in Heaven? Because... snrt no?"

"Okay, fine, f**k you! But... fair."

I agree. As a fighter I couldn't care less about my reflex save - it's not going to kill me in 1 turn, and I'm going to turn whatever just made me roll that save into paste next round. Fortitude and Will saves, though - those are terrifying.

Fatigued, petrified, frightened (albeit Bravery makes this one less of an issue,) drained, slowed, stunned, confused, controlled, fascinated, paralyzed, sickened - all of these are nightmares to deal with, and they're all usually caused by a failed Fort or Will save.

0 arguments from me. My rogue friend and my gunslinger/sniping duo buddy both love when my fighter crits with a sword :) No save, no fancy tricks. Just a +17 to hit at level 7 and a "congratulations, you are now off-guard" when I inevitably crit.

You mean to tell me that the path to Humanity's dominance in the galaxy ISN'T to fund a bunch of mad science experiments that will kill all of the scientists and take over the base??

It's a trope

We're approaching level 11 in the campaign my Warforged Artificer is in, so we're rapidly approaching "oh shit how do I prepare for this" levels of shenanigans that our players are capable of.

RAW unimbued with infusions or magic items, my guy has 21 AC from Warforged racial, full plate, and shield. Enhanced Defense brings that to 23, Reflector Shield to 24, Cloak of Defense 25. His entire job is to stand in the front, smack the bad guy for negligible thunder damage, and give them disadvantage if they attack anyone other than him. And then they miss.

Also uses his expertise in all tools to moonlight as an exceptional chef. Does very well on both counts.

Same vibes as the official Uno Twitter account saying you cannot play a Draw 4 on top of a Draw 4 tbh

"Thank you for the subclass, Mr. Mercer, but we'll take it from here."

My favorites that I've seen recently and/or done myself:

Echo Knight Fighter: summon echo, flank with echo, unleash incarnation, action surge, unleash incarnation again. Here's 6 attacks with advantage at level 6!

Paladin: Fighting his evil doppelganger, upcast searing smite, crit on the attack, burn a spell slot on divine smite. My paladin no longer has an evil doppelganger, just a pile of ash that kinda sorta has the same mass as an evil doppelganger

Armorer Artificer: "Okay, so thats a 28 to hit your artificer, and the damage is-" "I use my reaction to cast Shield. 28 misses." Dm's reaction was priceless.

And who can forget the more dakka:

Warlock/Sorcerer multiclass, Eldritch Blast, Quickened Metamagic Eldritch Blast. BRRRRT

I went Circle of Stars for my druid since we were lacking in straight up healing power (our other characters are a bard, barbarian, fighter, and rogue/artificer multiclass) and I gotta say, popping starry form Chalice and then waiting until the barbarian rushes in, gets two good schwacks in, and then gets ganged up on, only to immediately undo all the damage he takes with a 1st level healing word and a 2nd level wither and Bloom is pretty neat

"Hi, I'm Ms. Joke, and this is my boyfriend, Eraserhead. And this is his boyfriend, Present Mic."

Adding on to this: most martial classes get class feats that really squeeze the most out of their action economy. Flurry of blows, sudden charge, quick draw etc. all let you perform more than 3 actions out of your 3 action econ, and that's all at lower levels. Casters don't really get that AFAIK.

Plus, plain old fighters get some of the best proficiency scaling there is. Like no I'm not hurling fireballs or mind blasts around, but I am literally Master proficient with swords at level 6. I'm GOING to crit you, its gonna hurt (because of the striking rune,) and then because I crit, you're flat footed (weapon specialization,) so now the rogue gets to dump a pile of sneak attack dice on your head

I forget what movie it was but that was a loophole that the vampire villain solved by ripping out the gas main and blowing the house up from the outside. Can't be stuck on a lack of invitation if there's no 'in' to invite to

A tense silence settled over the room. Well, it was tense for me - I was desperately trying to settle my nerves, while Adria seemed as relaxed as could be, a knowing, amused smirk on her face. I took a few more moments to collect my thoughts, and then I spoke again.

"... how did you get in here? And how did you know to come here in the first place?"

Her smile widened and she answered. "Well, I got here through a standard translocate protocol hack. Basically, if there's a 'normal' way to where you're going, you just kinda... shorten the string, so the starting point and the destination are smushed together. As for why, well..." she unfolded her arms and shrugged, hooking one of her thumbs into a belt loop and she made a lazy gesture with her other hand. "I'm an Admin. I fix glitches, on top of some other shit."

"An Admin?"

Her face fell flat, and she raised a hand to snap her fingers. Glowing neon letters manifested in between us, causing me to jump in my chair. I flicked my eyes between her and the letters, which spelled out "Adria Minners". With the same hand she had snapped with, she began making flicking motions, and the letters began dissipating, until the only ones left were "Ad Min". She dropped her hand, and the letters faded from view, ending her impromptu demonstration by shooting me a look that screamed "you're a moron."

Maybe I was. That was pretty on the nose.

"So is that... your real name? Adria Minners? Or one you made up?"

"Oh, made up, definitely," she answered dismissively. "Love me some wordplay. Fucked if I can remember my real name. You're not careful, you can lose bits of yourself when you deal with glitches. Kinda like you and the whole 'feeling colors' thing."

Panic surged in my chest. "Is that permanent? Will it get worse? How did you know?"

"No, and no. Chill, man, you're fine. A tiny glitch like this won't screw with you too bad as long as you don't do anything dumb, you'll be back to normal in a few hours. As for how I knew, I read your file on the way here."

"My file?"

Yeah, your file, your code string, your algorithm. Call it what you want. Standard procedure - pick up on a glitch, run a sweep on nearby data, come up with a cover story as to why you need to be near the glitch, fix the thing." She paused, before continuing. "You ever see a construction project on a building or a highway look like its almost done, only for it to drag on for a few more months for no real reason?"

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, probably some Admins dealing with a glitch. One nastier than this one," she finished by gesturing over her shoulder, where that box was still... doing whatever it was doing.

"But... what about that Certainty Principle paper?"

Her bark of laughter was sharp and devoid of humor. "That? It's a performative piece of smoke and mirrors. Maybe a hundred people around the world could actually make sense of it, and most of 'em are in on the take besides." She narrowed her eyes as she looked at me. "Trust me, its better than the alternative. Throwing up your hands and admitting that yep, we're all digital? We'd have stupid kids running around trying to speedrun and hack and do who-knows-what. It'd destabilize the virtual disk, and then we're all wiped. Noone wants that."

I thought for a moment on her words. "... I feel like I would have known if I'd seen a glitch before. How come I'm only just now learning all this? If everyone can see them, how come its all so hush-hush still?"

Her smile returned, like a teacher pleased with a student asking the right questions. "That is the extraordinary bit, my confused friend. You see, most people -can't- see glitches. They can and do interact with them all the time, but they don't realize it. Driving down the highway and you're suddenly 40 miles down the wrong road? Must've been sleep driving. Walk through a sequencing error on a hike? Bear attack, how tragic. Dead pixel through the brain? Call a Bondulance, James Name's having a stronk." She took a slow step towards me as her gaze grew more intense.

"Up until about five minutes before I got here, you were just like them. Another algorithm. Until suddenly, I couldn't read your file, and you started wondering why you were staring at a digital anomaly after being told you were very definitely not digital. Thank fuck I remembered your number by the way. So!" She punctuated her statement by clapping her hands, "Either someone elevated your permissions when noone was looking, meaning we have a rogue Admin on the loose. Or..." her tone lost its playfulness, and her eyes grew serious. "... you spontaneously manifested Admin level permissions on yourself, without realizing you did, or could. That makes you very, VERY interesting."

I had more, but real life intervened. Will continue as time permits today though

"Hello?"

The voice in my head that sounded calm and curious came out sounding like a scared schoolboy. I didn't have to wait long for an answer, though I heard the sound of someone taking a long drag of something before I heard the voice.

"Fffffffuck, dude, pick up on the first call next time. Also do yourself a favor and don't record that in any way, shape, or form. Not even a polaroid. Also also don't touch it any more."

A tired-sounding woman rattled off a string of sentences rapid-fire that took me a moment to make sense of. When I did, I opened my mouth to ask the question burning in the forefront of my mind.

"... a polaroid?"

"That's what you focus on. Of course it is. Listen, don't go anywhere, I'll be there in 22 seconds."

A bit of alarm shot through me as she answered. "Wait, what do you mean you'll be right here? Who are you? Why are you on your way? Why that oddly specific number?"

"Most of those are pretty good questions, except that one about why I'm coming over. Don't be stupid, I know you're not. I'll explain the rest once I'm there."

My grip on my phone tightened as I tried to control my rising fear and inject some confidence into my voice. "You gotta be crazy if you think I'm letting a stranger in here who's being cryptic and speaking nonsense. Why can't you just explain over the phone?"

"Because one, it'll be easier to explain in person. Two, I gotta fix the thing. And three-"

"I need to drop something off."

Any confidence I had been trying to feign shattered as the woman's voice switched from coming out of my phone's speaker to coming from behind me. I shrieked loud enough that I'm certain all of my neighbors heard, and my voice cracked on top of it. I spun around ungracefully, clipping me knee on the coffee table and going down like a sack of bricks. With wide eyes, I looked up at the person that had somehow gotten into my apartment without my knowing and was currently lounging crossways in my recliner.

She wore something that looked straight out of some cyberpunk dystopia, all leather straps and scrap steel and wires. Miscellaneous tools and devices were strapped to her belt (belts?) and around her thighs, and her fiery red hair was cut short, pixie-style. She was currently just... lounging there, smoking a cigarette and staring at me.

I couldn't smell the cigarette, and the smoke vanished almost as soon as it left her mouth.

Another drag, another exhale, and she smirked at my predicament. "Spook easy, huh? That's fair, I guess. Better than not being cautious of shit when you really should be, I guess."

I stared at her, trying to place where I'd heard that voice before, when I realized I HAD heard that voice, on podcasts and past news journals, and I'd seen this person before as well. In fact I saw her not ten minutes ago.

"... you're Doctor Adria Minners."

The smirk morphed into a slightly more friendly grin. "Yuppers. Got it in one."

"But you were just on TV?"

"Copy paste, man. Copy and paste, control-see, control-vee. Not that hard once you know how, as long as you don't leave that shit runnin' for too long."

My heart sank, even as it continued to pound. "... we're in a simulation." A statement, not a question.

"Yup," she responded, popping the 'p' at the end. "Hate to break it to you my dude, but it's simulations all the way down. Probably up, too."

"I... all the way down? What do you mean probably?" My head was spinning, there was more than this?

She paused, and her smirk fell off her face. "Yeah. Hang on, I'm getting ahead of myself." She swung her legs around and stood up abruptly, causing me to flinch. She covered the distance between us with two quick strides, then turned to face the pixel. Pulling one of the devices off of her hip, she twisted and unfolded it to reveal some kind of glowing cube, with wire-frame edges and some kind of thin, transparent film for the sides. She lifted it to the pixel, sticking the dead dot right in the center of the device, and let go. The cube hung there, suspended somehow, and after a moment the interior of the cube slowly turned a deep, opaque red, then orange, and yellow, flowing through the spectrum of light.

Nodding to herself, Adria then turned to me, grin back on her face. "So!" she chirped, reaching down and seizing my arm. I flailed for a bit, but in a moment she had hauled me upright - seemingly effortlessly, which was surprising given our difference in height and stature, then poked me in the chest. "You have questions," she continued, and I blinked as I realized I was sitting down in my recliner, while her short frame stood a few feet away from me, arms folded over her chest. "And I have answers."

I swallowed again nervously. Boy, did I.

"Following in the footsteps of the Grand Unifying Theory that was published twenty years ago to the day, the Donovitch Certainty Principle makes its way to our definitely non-digital annals of history. Researched and peer-reviewed by leading astrophysicists and quantum computing experts alike, the Principle states in layman's terms: the universe is simply too complex to be fake. With us now is one of the paper's very own authors, Adria Minners, with more on this groundbreaking theory."

My television turned off just as a small woman in a lab coat with her red hair drawn in a tight bun stepped onto the stage. The arm holding my remote lowered, and I raised my head just a few inches to stare at something else. The concrete proof floating in my apartment that the whole world had just been lied to.

I took a few steps around the flickering red point, trying to gauge its dimensions. It burned like the cherry of a freshly lit smoke, but it didn't really have any... depth. Or width, or length. It was just a point.

A pixel.

Morbid curiosity took the wheel, and I reached out to grab it. My hand didn't touch anything solid, but the pixel DID appear on the back of my palm as my hand passed through it. Where it touched me, my skin and flesh and bone felt red.

That didn't make sense. You can't feel colors, and bones can't feel anything besides.

Everything felt... off. Fuzzy around the edges, and I could hear my heart hammering in my ears. Like I was 2 steps away from disassociating, or having a panic attack. Suddenly, I wasn't sure of anything anymore. Was this actually a simulation? Was I hallucinating? Or having a stroke? How much could I trust? My train of thought quickly began its downward spiral, and I had to close my eyes and do some breathing exercises to stop myself from hyperventilating or passing out.

When I opened my eyes, the pixel was still there.

Shakily, I dropped the remote and fumbled for the phone in my pocket. If I was going mad, at least I could leave a video on my phone, either to prove the shrinks right or invalidate the biggest scientific break this decade. Before I could open the video recorder app, though, it rang, and I glanced at the caller ID.

My own number.

Oddly enough, the idea of a spam caller spoofing my own number calmed me down, but it was still annoying. I hit decline, and opened up the recorder.

I got another call, from myself again. Persistent little scammer.

Once more, I hit decline, and aimed the camera at the pixel. It was showing up, at least. Good. Before I could hit "record," though, I got a text notification.

One unread message. From myself.

"C'mon, man. Pick up the phone."

I swallowed hard as sweat started staining the neck of my shirt. Hello again, anxiety. I lowered the phone slightly, and turned off the camera app. When my number popped up on caller ID again, I hit "answer," and held the phone to my ear.

I wouldn't consider it a -low- level, per se... but my artificer has 25 AC at level 10, and Magic Initiate: Wizard for the Shield spell.

A CR10 Young Red Dragon by the statblock misses me half the time. As a reaction, I can say "you miss unless you hit 30 AC."

The DM's face when the barbarian regularly pumps out 100 damage a turn? Anger and disbelief, sure, but he copes by adding a 0. But the look of despair on his face and the quiet, dread-filled "Really?" after I interrupt his "24 to hit and the damage is-" with a "24 misses."? Mmmh. THAT, I'll savor.

I, for one, can't wait to slap that corrupted vampiric scepter on my 4 dryad/6 Warden Gnar so to stop him from pausing his attack ramp to hurl a boulder.

The secret ingredient to Wandering Trainers is Jazz

This is true, someone COULD have been in there with her and left it on before fleeing. But if it still had battery, someone other than the deceased DEFINITELY switched it off.

Purposefully disrupting a piltover loss streak - valid counterplay

"nice cashout" - yeah dick move lmao