D&D Court: Sphere and Ear Theory

listening back on the "forced to take a level of paladin" case now that Fantasy High Junior Year Ep8 is out feels almost prophetic lmao

happylinlin00

I totally agree, because if you think of a basketball made of Jell-O the size of the earth, the circumference at southern altitudes are much smaller than the circumference at the Jell-O basketball's equator. Now shrink the Jell-O basketball down to a 10ft radius. If you move it further up to avoid the downed teammate, you also move the widest circumference (radius of 10 ft) up and above the enemy's ears, possibly excluding those right at 10 ft away since now their ears are at a lower altitude on the Jell-O basketball

just a little bawn

Scrolled down way too far and 9 months too late just to comment that I stand with Caldwell and Emily on the basketball and Jell-O conversation. They were in fact correct and because of the curvature of the sphere you would have a reduced effect and that could potentially hit fewer enemies. It's actually even more dramatic with fireball.

“Flubber is… for sure a little guy” 😂

Spaghetti Spawn

The sphere conversation was so hilariously over-complicated. For 28mm (1.1") mini figs, a bocce ball is pretty close in scale to the 10-foot-radius sphere, slightly too small. For plastic army men, usually 2" (~50mm), then a volleyball is a little bit larger than a 10-foot-radius sphere. Whatever the reference, lay one dude down, stand some other guys up in a circle around the prone dude, and check whether you can have the ball hit those guys' heads without touching the prone dude. Not perfectly to scale, but humanoids' heights can be all over the place anyway.

Natalie Kangas

Please don't talk about math more complex than multiplication on the podcast again. This hurt my soul. Nobody brought up the height of the assailants, which is a massive oversight.

Zach Jewell

There was defintely also an air bud where he played volleyball and I believe there was a soccer one although the soccer one may have been an air buddies film. Additionally there were many air buddies movies including one where they go to space. Personally I tend not to include the air buddies movies in the air bud cannon bc they fundamentally change the cannon by giving all the dogs the ability of speach. Additionally, I would like to shout out the underrated series Most Valuable Primate (MVP) which is basically air bud but with a chimpanzee and is imo superior to air bud

Zoop

In all seriousness, I assume the character Lyke has a last name so why not just compromise by calling him either his full name or his first name plus the first initial of his last name so for example if Lykes full name is Lyke Butler, agree to refer to him as Lyke B (or his full name; Lyke Butler)

Zoop

Emily wrote Flubber

Jeremy Chartrand

it's so incredible that caldwell and emily were absolutely right in the sphere and ear theory, they just couldn't express themselves at all coherently

EmperorGreed

I have a lot of newer players in my campaign and if they mess things up I just go whoa hold on no way, like my friend was a level 5 warlock with 20hp and i was like hold up have you rolled hit dice? and she said "did i do what now?" and we just added to their hp on the spot. my one friend is more experienced tho and keeps trying to do extra bonus actions and i razz the hell out of him bc he knows better he just thinks he can catch me slipping bc he got away with it once. so i think it depends on the player how you handle someone messing up their stats so badly.

Thinking about Brandon eating his dice in season 2 of adventure high :)

justdev

These guys don’t know anything about flubber

Gabriela

*Spoilers for Flubber*

kerokaze

Since Lyke is the grandma's surname, could the character instead go by the grandma's first name?

Emily and Caldwell were making a completely fair point! When most people cast spells with spherical area of effect, they put the point on the ground. So they are really only using half the sphere. When you start raising the sphere, you risk losing coverage on the edges!

Azeem

Just have to let the Patreon know that Jake had me, fucking, literally cry-laughing while walking down the street. Pretty sure passersby thought I was, fucking, loosing my shit. Fucking, for real. 🤣🤣🤣

Justin Mitchell

Saying fucking instead of like is great until you say "yeah me Mike and his kid were errr fucking errr walking through that weird park" and you realise the gap was too long.. just a very specific warning

david day

Every time I glaze out for a second at work I immediately think "sorry, I was thinking about Flubber" and have to desperately repress laughs in meetings thank you

Lachy

one of the most off the wall episodes, and im like fuckin here for it haha

chaoticnuetral66

....why is the jello orange

Locemo

This is one of the funniest posts on the patreon of all time

Theodore Carraro

I really feel uh fucking called out right now

Klarg of the Thunderfucks

This episode is trippy with a “Benjamin L.” Writing in and a character named “Lyke” cause my name is Benjamin Lyke.

Emily sounds baked in this one

Ashton James

One of the things that went completely unaddressed during the moon druid stat case was the fact that it was the 22nd session of their THIRD campaign. This player isn't new.

Dylan McCollum

If you would like to experience jello horrors, check out the Facebook page called "Show Me Your Aspics"

Jonathan Goddard

Emily calling the scenes from fubber made my day!! I think I need more flubber talk in my life. I can tell you are all Flubber stans

RuinedDruid

That moment when Emily wastes 12 minutes because she doesn’t know the difference between a sphere and a circle 🤦🏼‍♂️

W1LDF1RE

The DM should reward Like with a free familiar, named You.

Queue

Am I the only one thinking of lyke from f@tt...? there were no problems there and the name was sick!

Summer Rose (Grantaire)

@sphere v ear: just make the ruling that the circle of creatures decreases. Picture, if you will, in essence, a 10-foot radius cake shaped like a basketball - just bear with me. Then you have an average-height individual walk up to it and take a bite at their mouth height. Then you cut off the bottom of the cake ball so it makes a flat base, but you have to construct a frame to hold the center point of the cake 10ft + [the height of a downed companion] (in essence, 1.5 ft?) above the ground. Then measure the radius of the cross-section. Or just say you can hit anyone in a radius equal to the one twelfth of the square root of (120^2 - (120+[inches between ground and AoE] - [height in inches of the enemies])^2). If the enemies are 5'10" and you cast the spell to leave 18 inches of space underneath, your AoE would be right around 8'3". Can someone double check my math/formula?

Jordan Lyons

I demand more Flubber Talk!!

TheDopeGuy

As soon as i heard the overstatted druid case, it sounded to me like they were told 10 was -average- for stats, and they took it to mean that 10 was -base- for stats and added their roll4/drop1 rolls to 10 (and just happened to roll pretty poorly on half of them) so the dm dropping the 20s by 10, while leaving the teen numbers alone is more than fair.

AmberDextrous!

Can we get a mixed bag where Emily watched Flubber for the first time?

Kendra Waters

Im really gonna watch flubber now

John Tackels

I actually disagree with the sphere thing, to an extent. Yes, technically you can do that, but as a DM, I constantly have to question my players: Really? You can pinpoint a location that is exactly 25 feet up and 100 feet away from you? Perfectly? You're like some Ph.D geometry professor? I just don't buy it. I allow it if its not overkill, but if they're trying to like thread the needle on too many things, no, in 6 seconds there's simply no way you could adequately judge that to perfection. Also, if Murph ever reads this, what Caldwell and Emily were trying to explain, is that if you were to fire a sphere above the center of a group, the people on the edges of it would not be hit. That's all they were trying to explain. If you rested a basketball on the ground, as you get closer to the equator of the basketball, it's further from the ground than the point that is touching the ground.

Caldwell might remember- with Drawfee, Jacob wore layers of shirts and was fed yogurt. he was later made fun of for this and got called "yogi boy" for a WHILE and was associated with yogurt. the Lyke case reminded me of this!

So, I saw the absent minded professor when I was little, and liked it more than Flubber. Thanks for calling it out Tanner!

Nathan T Wilson

Anyone on there happen to be TAZ fans as well as a NADDPod fan? The question where the party is facing a Treant inside of a city bank feel extremely inspired by the Petals to the Metal arc, no??

One up: My characters name is "Yoo". Lots of who's on first stuff happening

ceeg

I think the player in the first case was right. Wall height doesn’t matter because I think the DM should’ve rebalanced the encounters when the party split up. Killing a player, while away from the party, when it was originally supposed to be something everyone faced, feels wrong. When the DM is in that position the wall height doesn’t really matter keep the player barely alive and give them the challenge of getting back to the party and make some minor encounters or something

Matt

Me : Oh I guess that first case will be really short, open and shut. Caldwell : Not on my fucking watch buckaroo!

Garga Lenoir

Need a mixed bag where they all watch Anchorman

Kris Barnes

My man, there are FOURTEEN Air Bud movies

Barbie Pootsky

I mean, if they were in the underdark, then the druid probably didn’t have a lot of familiar terrain, unless they were a circle of land underdark druid .

Kyle

Anchor Man quoters were the most annoying people of that era. Murph doesn't miss

Jake the Accountant

I don't know if links work but idk how else to attach a picture

https://www.tumblr.com/megaminds-megamilkers/714610109857333248/how-many-people-you-can-hit-with-the-shatter-spell?source=share So I laid it out and you can only hit enemies in directly adjacent squares to the prone teammate without also hitting them

The “fuckin” “in essence” bit had me in tearsss

Miranda Elise

This is one of the all time best Emily bits. Going on to credit Murph for all your success and ability too is next level. So good

Aidan Warlow

Shout out to any players who've had to deal with DM's like the trainwrecks that get mentioned. That fact y'all still wanna play is proof of how amazing ttrpgs CAN be❤️

Tyler Gob

I think if the player in the first case would've convinced the DM if they had busted out Pythagoras' theorem to make their case. Placing the center 10ft off the ground makes the blast radius completely tangential to the prone player, and even 6ft above ground the radius of the horizontal blast is sqrt(10^2 - 4^2) = 9.2ft, which would inflict damage on almost all opponents as an optimally placed sphere at a slightly lower height.

Mauricio

If I'm not mistaken, people were disappointed with Murph for saying that a player who names their character something like Sex Panther is someone who just doesn't care. I saw lots of comments saying that just because someone has a silly name, that doesn't mean they're not invested in the campaign.

Piping Plover

CR3 set precedence for Lyke's case when Erika named her PC Yu

Connor Dub

The sphere conversation is hilarious. Of course Emily and Caldwell are correct. The higher you raise the center point of the basketball, the less jellow will be hit, width wise.

Johnny Clifton

Emily deserves the peace prize!!!! I think it’s easier to picture it projected onto a 2D battle map. If you take a slice of a sphere, you have a circle. If you lower the point, you can draw a 10 ft radius circle on your battle map. The higher you put the point, the smaller the circle slice is at humanoid height level, the smaller the aoe circle you would draw on your battle map. If you wanted to get really crunchy, maybe you could put the shatter point on the square *beside* the downed character? Thats where my singular brain cell stops though.

Deeleenee

despite the seemingly sentimental reasoning, the fact that Like's PC's response was specifically "you're *railroading* my creative choice" and not something like "i'd rather not, i was really close with my grandma and naming my character after her is important to me" leads me to suspect that the PC is just using their grandma as an excuse to mess with the DM's speech habits at the very least it gives me the sense that the PC isn't acting in good faith, which would be extra nasty since theyre using grandma's name to do it smh best case scenario PC is genuine about the sentimentality, in which case i feel like they'd be more likely to also be understanding and compromise with the DM over using a title or the character's surname to refer to Like, or smth. maybe it's just me but i dont think playing the grandma card is actually that effective bc even if the PC's genuine about it, i'd bring up concerns about how potential d&d shenanigans might be awkward if the character has such an important namesake. unless everyone's super clear about expectations and stakes, i think naming characters after deceased relatives is something i'd wanna avoid

happylinlin00

Thought I would put it out there for those interested, a flat sphere is called a circle.

Nick

In reference to the Name Change case, one of the players in a new campaign I'm in has named their character Hye. And I'm not sure if it's gonna get old, but currently everyone's loving the "Hey, Hye!" "Hello" bit that's going round the table. Will it be confusing at times? Maybe, but what's a DnD party if not sightly confused at times?

boundspyral

Hilarious episode - Emily was right re: sphere but also super high for the first half?

For Like they should give them a title

Archimedes64

Day 1 of asking for the Flubber Mixed Bag

GeeseHowell

Jake with Emily talking about the basket ball and Jello https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/041/943/1aa1blank.png

Yeah, Emily is absolutely right - they're not raising it a little bit, they have to raise it a full 12 or so feet in the air to not hit their ally, assuming the ally was at the "center" of the blast. For enemies standing on the ground, only those in maybe a 5 foot radius sphere would be affected - anything further away and the blast would be above them. It's still possible but the blast won't be as effective.

Chase

Late night Murphy 🌙

Noah the Bullywug Boy #ReleaseTheFilthyGuppyCut

Fuck yeah murph getting it done!!!

Xavier