Talk:Its Inhabitants Kind (3.5e Flaw)
Deletion Proposal[edit]
"What is a Bonewheel?" and "What is the joke?"
A simple video of a Bonewheel Skeleton is located here.
Bonewheel Skeletons are a notoriously difficult enemy from the Dark Souls franchise, known for their high mobility in their rolling state and the extreme amounts of damage they can do in a short amount of time, as well as for having extremely narrow avenues of counterplay in a game largely about counterplay. While they are slow and lumbering when not in their rolling state, they often surprise individuals and can be encountered in groups and/or in narrow corridors, which has earned a rather large place in many player's hearts with either fond, or possibly more often, sour memories.
The joke is that you encounter many of these in the Painted World of Ariamis, a world within a painting in the game. The guardian of this world, Priscilla the Crossbreed, makes a comment when addressing the player and asking them to leave, saying "This land is peaceful, it's inhabitants kind, but thou dost not belong." This sentence and the existence of bonewheel skeletons in this world is often presented tongue-in-cheek as a contradiction by players of the game: An example of this is this video.
Personally, I feel the entry is, or can be made so, quality enough that it should be allowed to exist under the April Fools' banner, at least. Bonewheel Skeletons may be a single enemy, granted, but this page was made with humor and love for Dark Souls by some fond user, and we should be able to work with that. What do you think would keep the original idea of the page but make it more manageable in your opinion? --Jwguy (talk) 04:58, 10 September 2017 (MDT)
- I can't think of anything.
- What would people think if I made a feat that said "You gain a +1 morale bonus to laser gun attacks after you mow every blade of grass on a lawn"?
- It's bad mechanically, and seems pretty random. Shouldn't be allowed on the wiki. But to me it's a humorous reference to a game I'm very fond of. Marasmusine (talk) 02:15, 24 September 2017 (MDT)
- I think that comparison is a bit drastic and ill-suited to this issue: It implies a permanent bonus, and involves multiple items (laser guns, lawns) undefined in 3.5, as well as two concepts (mowing the lawn and combat) that are very distant from each other, whereas the only real issue with the flaw as it stood was that it referenced fear of a specific monster, which was undefined in 3.5, and is otherwise a par-for-the-course flaw in terms of the penalty it applies.
- That said, if you could dress your humorous game reference up to work in a general campaign setting, or even a specific one, I wouldn't have a problem with it being on the wiki, and I'd say that's possibly where we disagree: "Shouldn't be allowed on the wiki" is something I can't agree with unless the item simply doesn't work, and to a much lesser extent, if the content was intentionally inflammatory. I don't think it's our place to be arbiters and gatekeepers on humor and game references, or of anything else, really, outside of making sure the content is usable and is relatively within our various standards of presentation, balance, and legality, although even then with some notable exceptions.
- I'm going to work on getting the page into a more general application in order to suit the issue of it only applying to a single, non-3.5 monster, to that end. Incidentally, I don't think we ought be deleting pages while there are current discussions on the validity of their deletion. --Jwguy (talk) 09:03, 26 September 2017 (MDT)
- Laser guns are in the DMG. Everyone knows what a lawn is, in that respect it's better defined than "bonewheel skeleton". I can show you a youtube video of someone mowing a lawn if that helps. I chose the vagueness of the morale bonus to match the vagueness of "dealing with". If you know what game it's from, mowing the lawn and laser combat are not distant concepts, and it's also quite funny.
- Anyway, you've rewritten the feat now and excitingly, there's redlink for the bonewheel skeleton. Marasmusine (talk) 10:59, 26 September 2017 (MDT)
- While I would consider the example of Laser guns listed in 3.5e DMG as rather incomplete, at least more-so than the Kusarigama which is also described there, due to their lacking of damage types and specification, I'll grant that, as I honestly didn't think of that particular entry. That said, a lawn isn't defined mechanically or in any sense related to 3.5; Knowing what they are in the common sense of the word hardly makes up for that, when we argue whether mowing the lawn is worthy of a +1 bonus, as the argument was made. Sadly, a youtube video would help little in that respect, and they're just as undefined as Bonewheel skeletons, in that regard.
- As for the redlink, yes, I'm not the terribly fastest at creating creatures, especially when I'm juggling it with my daily workload and trying to make sure I'm making the proper adjustments to it. I finished it just shortly after your message regarding it. --Jwguy (talk) 12:52, 26 September 2017 (MDT)