Misunderstanding rule

Stamets@lemmy.world to 196@lemmy.blahaj.zone – 762 points –
95

"Become a dragon" covers most, if not all, of the rest.

Really dependent on which mythology's dragon you become. That aside, being a dragon in modern day would probably be very hazardous. Better hope you're a small enough dragon to not cause much property damage while figuring out your new body, and to stay mostly undetected, because otherwise you're likely to end up dead, or in captivity somewhere in fairly short order.

Assuming D&D lore, polymorph fixes that problem pretty easily. A polymorphed dragon could blend into society pretty well, and if you want, you could still get a ride into international waters (to avoid setting off national airspace warnings), fly down to some random jungle tribe, and be worshipped as a god. Plus nigh immortality (assuming aging only affects your polymorphed form and you continue to age at the rate of your dragon-self).

I'm Welsh, we already like Dragons, I'd be the second coming of Y Ddraig Goch. It'll be fabulous.

I was gonna say, if a snake like Donald Trump or Boris Johnson can get ahead in this life then a Dragon would be the perfect political figurehead for people to worship support.

Now I want to see that movie. Guy becomes dragon, turns into politician.

I don't know, I don't want to sully my personal feelings about dragons.

Lol I just realized this is basically the story of Dune (God Emperor of Dune)

always relax

sphincter prompty unclenches

Always Relax is the true Instant Death potion. Why stop at the sphincter when every muscle and blood vessel in your body suddenly stops contracting.

Master alchemist: You idiot! You can't make a "potion of relaxation" by watering down a paralysis potion! It just takes longer to work.

Takes "always relax" potion

Where's the potion which lets me do two chicks at the same time man.

I adore this movie. But not enough has changed to completely date this masterpiece, and I have very conflicted feelings about that.

Edit: for anyone in food-service or retail instead of IT, watch "Waiting" instead.

  • Drink the purple one
  • Jump off a cliff
  • Realize I took the wrong purple one
  • Still relaxed though
  • survive an crawl up again, relaxed
  • drink the right purple one
  • jump off the cliff again
  • realize what flight actually stands for
  • still relaxed though

Anyone can talk to plants,it's getting them to talk back that's tricky

just eat some of their cousins (i know nothing about biology) then look at them for long enough and I'm sure you'll hear something

Dragon for sure. It's getting increasingly embarrassing to be a human...

DnD dragon, get shapechange for free

Yeah, it's strength, flight, maybe poison breath all in one and you can go back to human anytime. Dragon has literally no downsides!

I mean... I don't know how much dragons eat

My family watching me eat 2 whole roasted chickens, 5kg of potatoes, and drink a whole pot of soup, all in 10 seconds: 1000029906

Well it doesn't specify dragon type/color. Not every dragon has an innate alternate form ability, so hopefully you get one of those.

Age is also an issue. Depending on how old you are, you'll probably be somewhere between young to young adult. If you're at least 50 you can hit young adult. This means you're pretty limited in a lot of things, and if you have your innate spellcasting at all, it's gonna be pretty limited.

If you're one of the dragon colors that doesn't get innate alternate form, you're probably gonna have to hide for the better part of a century just to get old enough to have some decent spells.

So there are downsides, if temporary ones, to the dragon option. Still, it's probably the best choice, yes.

Hoard then eat enough gold and other valuable materials and you become a god.

There's wonderful cliffs around my city, l dream of being a dragon and sleeping on the cliff basking in the sun all day

Talk to Plants.

Just so I can tell vegans what their food is saying.

This was my first choice, until I thought of how horrifying the screams would be whenever someone mows the lawn

These kind of posts always have weird ones like Poison Breath.

Why would I want that? To kill people? Mustard gas is easy to make and I'd just get arrested anyways.

The only reasonable use I can think of is if you wanted to start a pest control company... woo?

Instant death may be useful if it's like the Death Note, or else you'd also just get arrested.

Instant death may be useful if it’s like the Death Note, or else you’d also just get arrested.

At some point an investigator figures out that you're the only person that's connected to all the deaths, however remotely. As the years go by, you've done lunch together a few times and are on a first name basis. Their efforts are fruitless, and they can't prove anything. But now you have an FBI surveillance van permanently parked outside your home, and that investigator keeps coming around.

You can always relax by noticing your body & mind relaxing instead of trying to force them to relax

From the creators of "Just don't be sad", here comes: "Just relax"

I like to focus on my shoulders. If I notice they're scrunched, I lower them, and the rest of my body tends to follow suit.

I'll take the "talk to plants" potion since it changes LITERALLY NOTHING, and I don't want any additional powers myself.

Except now you're wracked with crippling guilt every time you mow the lawn, chop up veggies for dinner, or walk by some poor little scrawny weed growing out of a crack in the sidewalk.

Ok thats a half empty glass of sunshine if I ever saw one. How you guna spend your time conversing with something that'll live less than a year, shit out a bunch of seeds, then die? Why not find out what the Oaks, Cypresses'ses', Hemlocks and Maples have to say about the day America was conceived, birthed, crawled, walked, flew, first fuck last fuck. Shit I'd retire and walk the trails listening to stories from something that has expierienced 3 life spans.

Except plant never developed language or even neurons to process thought. You drink the "Talk to plants" potion and the world is just as silent as it was before.

It was recently discovered that plants do talk to each other. It's still being studied.

That is really old news. Whole forests do this. But that's still not talking.

If that's what a "talk" to plants drink does, I'd love to get a "talk" to humans drink. Imagine the psychology experiments I could set up if I could understand the subconscious pheromone, posture, subvocal, and other various poorly understood methods of communication!

Why would anybody take talk to plants? You can already do that. They couldn't talk back even if you took that potion, nothing changes.

Yes but if it was clarified that you could in fact communicate with plants in a meaningful way I'd take that one in a heartbeat. You could do so much with that. Imagine being a reporter or a private investigator lol. An archeologist could just ask some trees what was going on under them. Dying of hunger or thirst? Just ask some plant what's edible or where some water is. Plenty of plants want to be eaten to reproduce anyway. Ask some fungus (if it counted as plants for magic) what the meaning of life is while you're at it

"Mr Mushroom, whats the secret of life."

"Not this again... another human got high off us and started talking to my genitals..."

Jokes aside, the ability to tell plants what to do would be sick.

"Become a dragon" is right there, so why would anyone even choose anything else!?

When my cat yawns I want to stick a finger in his mouth, and dragon talons are far too big for that.

Especially, like, flight?

What would force someone to want to fly and NOT be a dragon?

It would also cover strength. And courage, considering you're a freaking dragon! And depending on the type of dragon, poison breath could be covered too.

Can I in become a dragon and then rebecome as many times as needed?

Become a dragon that hunts billionaires to make a horde of wealth for yourself. I'd watch that.

Joke's on you, I'm my own worst enemy!

I think the sleeper is "talk to plants". Remember how Aquaman used to be the joke in the Justice League? And I'm not well versed in comics, but Poison Ivy comes to mind as being pretty powerful.

Nah, if anything talk to plant is pretty weak. Poison Ivy can control plants, which is significantly stronger. Control plants let's you force them to grow big and grapple people, or produce particular toxins in people's faces, etc. Talk to plants lets you ask plants very politely to do something, but they are still just normal plants, and can just say no.

Plants can't say no because they can't talk. But you can talk to them.

DM here. Note that this is "talk to plants" and not "tame/control plants." BIG difference. You basically just add "plants" to the languages section of your character sheet, and I have to figure out what accents ferns, oaks, and grasses have.

1 more...

I choose the dragon one because I can get more out of that than the others here.

I'd be worried that I couldn't change back. I'd choose flight, since none of the other dragon stuff feels too useful besides just being strong.

Maybe they're all secretly traps. You can't change back from being a dragon; if you choose flight, you just start floating upwards and can't come down; you're not immune to your own poison breath; courage just makes you incredibly over-confident in your own abilities...

Oh I didn't think of that, yeah I think in that case I'd rather be stuck as a dragon, even if I can't turn back. Way less risky/dangerous than not being able to control the others. Would require adjustments and adaptations but hey, still better than having to chain yourself down so you don't float away.

I feel like all of these are just normal things in the real world aside from become a dragon.

We got steroids, weed, you can already talk to plants, you can just buy a plane ticket to fly.

Modern life is wildly magic.

I mean if I have to keep living, can't I at least kill then slowly and painfully?

the woke moralists want you to believe you can’t already talk to plants