themoken@startrek.website Some want to play XCOM without dice, and get really pissy when the dice say “no”.

bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works You and your friends might want to explore the idea of social gravity in neurodivergence.

mirshafie@europe.pub Yes, and… is this propagating anywhere in any meaningful way?

This image is 80% of my personality.

But also, when did every single PNG on the internet become a “meme”? Feels like I’ve been seeing this a lot, lately.

LurkingLuddite Yeah, it’s kind of wild that this discussion is happening on this post in particular. This is a galaxy that has multiple times more extreme gravity than other galaxies, and someone wants to use that finding as a reason to sell the idea that dark matter isn’t stuff?

If it were a modling issue, then wwe’d see this everywhere. This is the opposite of evidence against dark matter.

Gods, I’m so tired. My supplemental health insurance is about to run out, so my physiotherapist has given me a gym routine focused on rehabbing my slipped disc, and so I’ve gone from going to the gym 2x per week with the PT to 6x per week with my wife, and…

I’m so tired. Everything is stiff and achy. And I’m finding myself doing less toe walking, which is also making me feel kind of off balance.

I admit, I’ve never touched Hero Lab, but I assumed you got the PDFs with the service. If you don’t… Weird.

Fanatical dropped into the basement, over on th’other site, to let everyone know that there’s a promo code for 10% off their bundle, which can be entered at checkout: REDFV10

thefuzzyfurrycomrade@pawb.social Fair. I’m just very used to people telling newbies that various aspects of the system are sacrosanct and non-negotiable.

thefuzzyfurrycomrade@pawb.social said in First-Time DM Advice?: > Magic items in this system are fundamental to progression, so unless you are using Automatic Bonus Progression you should be careful to give enough gold per level.

This is all about first-time GMing, so I don’t want to push back too hard on this or anything, but I do find that this element is wildly oversold and over bought in PF2e circles. The fundamental runes are, of course, absolutely built into the characters’ power budgets, but as an item component they are also a really interesting design/play space for GMs, but this is a space where the broader PF2e community often tries to put its foot down hard.

I’ve found delaying magical items and runes at times to be narratively and emotionally impactful when the players finally get their upgrade and can have an easier time tackling enemies. I’ve also found occasionally seeding dungeons with significantly over-levelled items to be satisfying for everyone, too. Both are often treated as verboten by the community at large, though, which seems to demand rigid structure to their games.

spitfire@pawb.social Yeah, the system just shuts down that level of min/maxing. There are no builds in the game that break the encounter math assumptions, and if someone thinks they’ve found one, they’ve either read something wrong, or discovered somethinf that will be in the next round of errata.

Rolls are always done vs a DC, which means there’s no worry of a low-level creature invalidating a high level creature by rolling high vs a low row (or vice versa). That kind of wild luck has been stripped out.

Bonuses of the same type don’t stack, so you can’t throw Guidance, Bless, and Inspire Courage on someome to get them a +3 bonus to a roll. They’re all status bonuses, and for each bonus type you tax the MAX, not the SUM, of all that have been applied, so the total bonus from those 3 spells is +1. This limits the easy, cheesy math-hack solutions.

DCs are level based, and frow quite large, which means players get very very good at tackling old challenges, but there are some challenges that are functionally impossible to overcome at any given level. Natural 20s have well defined behaviours in the game, so there’s no “automatic success” cultural norm that breaks this.

It’s important to note, the level that you use for the level-based DCs is the challenge’s level, not the party’s. The leveled DC table is used in designing creature and hazard stat blocks, and when creating a leveled challenge on the fly. Many new GMs to the system misunderstand the table and instead constantly scale every challenge in the game with the party.

spitfire@pawb.social Yes, CotKK was rewritten for PF2e, but and it runs fine, but it’s still a port, you know? It has some rough edges. From the players’ side of thing, I’m sure it would be just fine, but as a new GM… Let’s just say, it was the first adventure I bought, and as a new GM I waited to play it until I felt more comfortable with the system. There’s nothing wrong with it, but there are places where you can feel how it’s not representative of the system. If that makes sense.

If you can get your hands on a cheap used copy of Menace under Otari, even if you don’t want to run it, it’s worth reading through as a GM. It really is purpose built for introducing the mechanics of the game, and is quite short.

There’s no pressing need to restrict first party books, or even third party series like BattleZoo or Team+ sources, but the splat books do offer a lot of options which can cause analysis paralysis. Because the system doesn’t have the same optimization meta as other, similar products, the expansiveness isn’t really an issue, but players often get bogged down in the details. People who are used to playing the optimization meta, even if they want to stop, sometimes can’t help themselves. I include myself in that group. I’m hesitant to suggest restricting books, though, because I think some of the more interesting classes are in splats: Guardian and Commander in War of Immortals, Magus in Secrets of Magic, and Thaumaturge in Dark Archive.

A couple of more things everyone at the table should be aware of, though, now that I’m thinking about it:

• The game has some fairly distinct tiers of play, even if the boundaries between them are somewhat fuzzy. This is especially noticeable from levels 1 - 5, which is what I like to call the “deadly things are deadly” tier. HP is low, AC is low, and critical hits are common. Not only is this where the game can feel quite a bit deadlier than people may be used to, but people who are used to being able to solve the “sharp, pointy objects hurt” problem with basic class options will often find themselves feeling a little impotent.
• Because Level is Power, and Power is Level, people who are used to established caster/martial power gap tropes may be caught off guard by the class balance, particularly before casters gain access to Rank 3 spells (i.e. Level 5). On-level enemies are real challenges to casters, not canon fodder, and at early levels they can be real threats. On top of that, the numbers are balanced around save spells failing as the default outcome (but a failed save spell also does half damage), which often leaves new magic users feeling less cool than they expected. This starts to go away starting around Level 5, once they start to exit the “deadly things are deadly” tier and begin to enter the “fantasy hero” tier, but until then… Let’s just say that people have had FEELINGS.

You want to make sure everyone has read Chapter 9 from Player Core, which goes over the basics of the game. 90% of it will be fairly old hat for people coming from 3.x and 5e, but it does contain the core system differences from those games.

Menace Under Otari, the adventure in the Beginner’s Box, is explicitly a tutorial dungeon designed to teach both game masters and players the mechanics of the system. Rusthenge is another purpose-built “first adventure”, though it’s not explicitly a tutorial, and has less system guidance for the GM. I’ve also heard that Dawn of Frogs is a good introductory adventure, that in some ways does a better job of introducing the system than Menace does (but I don’t have it/haven’t read it).AyeSpidey, on Reddit, also has an introductory adventure they wrote, that you can find on Pathfinder Infinite.

Crown of the Kobold King is a good early adventure, but it’s a port of a Pathfinder 1e adventure, so I don’t think it’s the best choice for everyone’s first time.

One thing that’s key for the game is making sure everyone knows what their characters do. As people who’ve played something other than 5e, I assume you’re all used to that, but I’ve seen a lot of people drop into the subreddit complaining that, as GM, it’s too much work for them to know how everyone’s characters work. The culture of “I don’t know how to play, I just let the guy hosting things tell me what to do” falls apart here.

PF2e is fairly heavily based in D&D 3.5, though, even if the core ‘engine’ is different. What’s markedly different, though, is how the game treats characters/creatures and the “character builder” game. The game itself includes a lot of guardrails that functionally prevent character-based hyper-optimizing. Character power bands are strongly level-based, and level is a direct, if mildly fuzzy, measure of character power. Many players grind against this at first, because they’re used to finding wacky interaction effects and loopholes that just make them functionally a higher level than their character sheet says. Instead, the game rewards cooperation, tactics, and outplaying the other side of the table.

A lot of people playing the system like it for for how it just surfaces a bunch of ‘paper buttons’ for them to press over and over again, and how it provides a rigid, predictable style of play. I’m happy for them that the game provides them tools to generate the experience they want, but I’ve also found that these players have a more generally dim view of what other kinds of experiences the system can enable. It’s a wildly flexible system that can power a huge range of table experiences, if you so choose. The key is understanding what is core to the game and it’s balance, and what is just “good ideas suggested by professional designers”.

The four core pillars of the game are the proficiency system (T/E/M/L), the degrees of success system, the action constructs, and the feat-based modular character design. Everything else is a default recommendation for adjudicating an outcome.

Oh yeah, it’s real bad out there right now. RTO mandates and a tech sector that’s shedding workers like dandruff is making things feel really scary. Plus, I get to watch the half of the company that didn’t get laid off all announce their promotions on LinkedIn, because that’s also where the small handful of jobs that I qualify for are posted.

It’s been a month since I was laid off. The first few weeks, I was too busy updating my resume and looking for new jobs to apply for to really feel the emotional impact of it all. But now the resume’s looks good, and the number of jobs out there in my field have dried up. Especially the remote ones, which are kind of necessary for me, since there are exceptionally few businesses in my city that deal with my field.

modernangel@sh.itjust.works They shape 100% of the storyline. The campaign is the story of their activities in the world.

They don’t shape the world, though, unless they do things to intervene in the current world lines of the people and institutions in it. At the start of the campaign, I scaffold the major political players in the world,and sketch out what their goals are, and how they’re trying to achieve them. I estimate how long it takes them to get to places of import for those goals, and track that in a calendar. I leave hooks for the players to pick up and engage with those things from time to time, but if they’re not interested, those entities just continue on unimpeded.

Meanwhile, everywhere they go, I dig into books of tables to come up with some NPCs with problems that need to be solved, side quests that can be activated, and locations that can be explored. They’re just names on a page until the players pick up the hook, but if they do, then the party does things to encounter and activate new political players who end up on the board. I then do the same thing after the fact, and add them to the calendar.

Their story is 100% theirs. The opportunities to shape the world’s story are there. There’s no “storyline” for me to bend around their gravity.

nocturne Yeah. They just say “5e” without specifying 2014 or 2024, but I think the lack of specifying and the use of legacy terms is implying they’re targeting the original release.

gwl@lemmy.blahaj.zone Ah, yes. As usual, it’s the crypto-hyper-optimizers whining that their thoughtless build plans and play loops have been mildly disrupted.

Ah. No, the Magus revamp isn’t in the Dark Archive update. Instead, it’s coming with this summer’s new book release, Impossible Magic. We won’t get details until at least mid-July.

From the red basement:

Psychic Details:

• Global change: Amp wording changed, can no longer be used with any activity requiring as a subordinate action, such as spellstrike.
• Unleash works on duration spells now if they deal damage for the initial damage (Changed in edit: was not nerfed, wording was moved around)
• Vector Screen is 10ft-20ft line (up from 5ft-10ft)
• Organsight Replaced with Locate for infinite Eye Spells
• OsW Spells Changes: Breath Fire, Blazing Bolt, Fireball, Ice Storm, Howling Blizzard, Frozen Fog, Volcanic Eruption, Arctic Rift, Falling Star
• Whispering Steps is now a Stride, not a Step. Still considered forced movement so wont trigger reactions.
• Tangible Dream Spell Changes: Dizzying Colors, Invisibility, Confusing Colors, Resplendant Mansion
• Imaginary Weapon nerfed: 1d8s to 1d6s. Damage type changed to Force.
• Violent Unleash: Costs 1 action, no longer stuns. This is a nerf, as you can no longer ‘pay’ for the stunned action with a quickened action, and it no longer is ‘free’ if you’re slowed (stunned and slowed wont stack).
• New Feat 12: Amp Focus (Regain 3 focus points when refocusing even if not all used on amps)
• Feat 20 Twin Psych: Reduced from level 20 -> level 18
• New Feat 20: Autonomic Psychic Action, Permanent Quickened for Psych Actions
• Feat 20 Become Thought: Removed Spirit Weakness

Psychic Archetype:

• Dedication: No Amp or Focus Point with initial psi cantrip, still gain passive benefit
• Psi Development (6): Now enables amping of cantrips in addition to granting a second cantrip, gives only one focus point.

Time Mage Archetype:

• Chronocognizance still literally impossible to grab cause it requires master in perception still
• Spell Acceleration (Renamed from Quickened Casting): Gives Quickened Casting Feat? (No can’t stack)

I’m currently dealing with the flu so to exhausted to look over thaum and compare to nethys, but that’s all I found in regards to the classes I play.

Edit 2: It’s been asked a ton, don’t worry thaum players.

• Chalice scales better / buffed in other ways: temp HP equals level instead of half on effects, reg HP heal is 2x level
• Lantern intensify better
• Mirror adept is now a ‘Can’ choose to explode
• Wand does better damage more often: 3d4, always end of next round recharge. Intensify bonus is equal to level, not dice
• Paired Link buff: No range limit, both people treat one another as adjacent for spells and thaum effects regardless of distance. Followup feat adds the 30ft limit, but only if allies try to cast spells on each other, the thaum links are still infinite range

Bo was looking for a long term contract, and long term contracts usually have lower AAV. We know that the Phillies offered $200M for 7 years, and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the Jays offered similar. This is what Bo had told people he was looking for.

He then turned around and signed a 3 year high AAV deal. He just decided to pivot and play a totally different game than the one he’d told everyone, without telling the other teams he’d engaged with. I don’t think we can blame anyone for not making better offers when he seems to have made a very sudden change in his decision making process.