foyrkopp

I literally ran this for my group just now.

Background was a cave system with very limited resources (previously few dead bodies to spare) and the Lich was both rather low on the power scale and Artificer-themed (so no "just spellcasting the party to death) and a Kobold.

So he fought/thought more like an engineer, not a powerful necromancer.

Highlights included:

• Lair filled with Carbon Monoxide (I let the party notice symptoms and retreat, it was more of an area dental tool than a trap)

• freezing the flooded exit tunnel so the party had to tunnel through ice, making them vulnerable to an ambush

• installing an artifact that would flash-freeze said flooded tunnel with the party inside

• a "main entry" labyrinth to the lair that was rigged to collapse

• a side entry with a hidden, massive door that tried to crush the party and did manage to separate them

• one-time sigils that would create a zone of Web, Darkness and, again, flash-freeze the intruders (and the undead defenders delaying them)

• a remote body with his true body walled off in a tunnel behind the wall it can escape even if it loses

• a few, highly upgraded undead

A smart player will try to keep the owl out of LoS during most of the round, so sacrificing action + reaction for "I attack it once it comes out of cover" is the best most NPCs can do.

I'm aware.

I just didn't want to go into detail with this particular can of worms.

There is a plausible economic incentive to do this:

Reputation.

This happens less in markets with few, big sellers and lots of customers locked into long-term contracts (like ISPs), but it does happen occasionally in high competition markets where customers can take their business elsewhere easily.

Restaurants are a good example - where I live, a host might hand out a round of after-meal shots on the house to encourage a big table of uncomplicated guests to come again.

Hypothesis: what matters here is a social toolbox for engaging with "attractive"/compatible women in a non-romantic/sexual way.

I.e. someone who, even as a teenager, had lots of female friends, is likely to have a learned how to deal with them as persons, beyond "I'd like to hit that".

(Paradoxically, such a person is more likely to find a romantic partner, because they might have lots of M-F acquaintances/friendships that can potentially become something more.)

Someone who never learned that, can only interact with (to them) attractive women through the lens of "I'd like to hit that", which has a much higher risk of ending in failure.

If someone in the second category was always raised on the values of romantic success being a requirement for a non-failed life, and possibly with a touch of chauvinism/misogyny, they might wind up caught up in a frustrating loop of failure.

This is how incels can happen.

A landlord and their tenant(s) are at a natural conflict of interest to begin with.

Also, for most tenants, the rising costs for many goods and services associated to housing are bundled into rent, so to them, it's their landlord who's jacking up prices and being frugal with repairs etc.

Next, the term "landlords" encompasses not only uncle Mike who invested his life savings in two apartments to secure his retirement, but also the millionaire who owns a dozen houses and the middle manager who doesn't even own the units they're managing but has to represent a large company.

So landlords make for easy targets of frustration to begin with.

A landlord who is, on top of that, intent on not only covering costs (including their own), but wants to ~~create generational wealth~~ get rich(er) quickly, will have to squeeze their tenants more.

Remember: wealth isn't created. It's extracted.

(Yes, there's money genuinely being generated somewhere in the realms of credits and banking, but my LL isn't being paid by a bank. They're being paid by me.)

Arguably, that's actually plausible

• No one claimed the Alliance were free from casual racism. They may be trying, but their personal culture was formed by decades of imperial rule.

• Those medals are for "command staff" only. Han is the captain of the MF and Luke is the acting squad leader of Red Squad (you might notice that the veteran, who missed his shot but survived, doesn't get a medal, either.)

I don't lock my phone to keep my SO off it.

I lock my phone to keep everyone off it.

Fly-By helps against opportunity attacks, but not against readied attacks.

Which, to me, is fair, because readying attacks requires the foe to sacrifice their main action and reaction.

When I DM, I always keep the idea in my back pocket that an enemy that has been distracted by a familiar too often will ready an attack to get rid of it the next time it is in range.

It'll still eat their action, might miss, and I telegraph it sufficiently that an attentive player might adapt their familiar's behavior, but it's a thing that can mix up combat and keeps players on their toes.

Politicians who know that their political career is about to end have the nasty habit of doing favors for their big corporation of choice, knowing that they'll receive a cushy board position in return afterwards.

If you want to establish term limits, you also need to establish some sort of accountability for the time afterwards.

But at this point, the conclusion of either interpretation should be the same:

The Bible is not a workable moral guideline for modern life.

Neither "Thou shall not sleep with men like you would with women" nor "Thou shall not rape men like you would women" are acceptable.