#corner case

[wonderofthedaspodcast]

It’s Not in the Rules!

Welcome to the Wonders of Thedas Podcast, a little earlier than usual!

This next episode has a rather unique subject: parts of the rules that the book doesn't cover or isn't very clear on! Dragon Age is simple but not shallow, and with any system with depths there are plenty of corner cases or odd situations that leave players and GMs scratching their heads.

We already have quite a list of situations to use ourselves, but we wondered if the gaming community had some more for us!

Let us know if you've come across a strange situation in the Dragon Age RPG, and we can talk about how we might interpret it, and the ramifications of those interpretations in-game! We'd be happy to put contributions on the next podcast that comes out in a week!

To give you an idea of what we are looking for, here are the examples we've already thought of:

[*]What do you do when multiple items/abilities reduce the cost of a Stunt? [*]After level 6, does the focus bonus added to the degree of success apply to the Heal major action? [*]If a Stunt costs 0SP, how many times can you use it in one turn? [*]When you roll Stunts including a Lightning Attack or a Dual Strike, can you choose which target is subject to further Stunt effects? Same goes for Fast Casting? (for example, if you Lightning Attack two targets but also use a Knockdown stunt, does this stunt affect the original target or can it hit the second target?) [*]Is there an order to which your abilities increase at level up? Can you increase Constitution or Magic before gaining increases to Health or Mana this level? [*]Can you use the Skirmish stunt to set yourself up for Lightning Attacks or Dual Strikes? [*]Is there grappling in Dragon Age? How would it work? [*]I'm drinking a lot of Lyrium Potions. Should something other than extra Mana be happening? [*]Can you generate SP on a test made as a reaction? [*]What do you do when a player wants to perform an action that is normally a Stunt? [*]Do bestowed, ongoing effects keep going after the user's unconsciousness or death? Only spells or all abilities? [*]If you are using a weapon you do not possess the group for you deal half damage. Does this half damage rule extend to class powers, spells, and item bonuses to damage? [*]What happens when a flying creature is hit with a Knockdown stunt? [*]The Guardian specialization makes you immune to the Knock Prone and Skirmish stunts. Does this apply to abilities that do similar things but are not specific stunts? [*]What happens when an abomination casts a spell and triggers a Mishap and gets the Harrowing Mishap?

[plainblackguy]

90% Use Case

When you're developing software (or any product really), don't optimize for the crazy corner cases. Optimize for the thing that most people need. Maybe in your case it won't be 90%, but if it's even 51% then that's the path. Hide everything else away, or eliminate it all together. Set sane defaults so the only people that have to care are the ones that have the crazy use case. 

[lessonslearnedfordevs]

A lesser known division error

When dividing in C, we all know to check that the denominator is not 0 first. However there is another way that division can cause a runtime exception. Suppose you try to do: INT_MIN / -1. INT_MIN is the smallest value a 32 bit signed integer can hold (which happens to be -2147483648). But because most computer systems use two's complement to store a signed value, INT_MIN is one less than the negation of INT_MAX. Therefore, when this operation is performed, the result is a value that is larger than can be stored in a standard 32 bit signed integer. Try it:

#include <stdlib.h> #include <stdio.h> #include <limits.h> void main(void) {     int32_t a = INT_MIN;     int32_t b = -1;     printf("%d", (a/b)); }

You won't get a warning, but your application will crash.