#I've never been good at committing that much time and effort to a mobile game. I am NOT a 40 year old facebook user 😭
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To think I take a nap and within the....... uh...... 6 hours(?) I've been asleep.... The Kingdom Hearts fandom exploded..... because of two KHML pictures....
#I honestly would love to get into missing link. but I feel like I wouldn't understand it cause I just CAN'T get through UX or DR#I've never been good at committing that much time and effort to a mobile game. I am NOT a 40 year old facebook user 😭#BUT AT THE SAME TIME I REALLY WANNA KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON WITH IT 😭😭😭#kingdom hearts#kingdom hearts missing link#KHML
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oh btw i don't think i ever explained the reason why egghog shadow is such a maker compared to canon shadow!!!! the reason is sad. sorry. also this ended up being 80% eggman tangent. you're welcome
shadow is the brother that spends the most time around eggman, and that's been the case since he was a baby. when he was a small child, it was because he's a test tube baby with dubious dna and experimental chaos powers that had never been proven successful thus far. eggman has ran and continues to run extensive testing on his chaos powers, senses, and tolerances (or lack thereof).
shadow is also eggman's first child. eggman has a special sort of simultaneous attachment and bitterness about it. he's spent so much time and energy researching shadow, this valuable anomaly hand-crafted by his grandfather, and he's come away with many valuable lessons and pieces of information. but he's bitter because he doesn't like the parenting aspect of this situation.
i've said this before, but eggman has always thought of the egghogs as tools or objects, not his children. he only refers to them as his children for PR reasons and to make them think he loves them. he hates that despite his best efforts they still have some semblance of free will he can't scrub away.
of course, that's part of the thrill, too. we've seen time and time again in several different canons that eggman loves this game, seeing when and where the people he recruits will slip and try to outsmart him or overthrow him or decide to leave him. he likes the give and take of it. he even makes his robots defiant to always have someone to take down a peg. it's fun. so he keeps the boys and watches them wrestle each other for the last ice cream sandwich with his seat reclined and popcorn in hand
there's just no 100% sure way to get rid of that defiant spark in people. recruits for a few weeks or months or even a few years, that's one thing. but the boys are a lifelong commitment. he's made them strong, stronger than they could have ever been on their own. he's made them smart and calculating and perceptive. that could be turned against him, and unlike an anomaly like the neo metal amy incident, there's no backspacing any code to fix an insurrection.
it's thrilling. it's so much fun. he hates it. no matter what, they're his boys.
he keeps them on a tighter leash than all of his robots combined; he's especially concerned with keeping shadow close. sonic is hard-headed and impossible to change now that his twisted ideologies have had time to set; silver is meek and afraid of disappointing his family. it isn't hard to keep them on track.
shadow has stayed hard to read, and eggman senses that something's going on in that head of his. so shadow stays right by his side, makes eggman a latte with steamed austrian goat milk every morning, polishes the egg mobile, and most importantly for what was supposed to be the actual point of this post, acts as his assistant on projects.
all of the egghogs have spent a lot of time working with eggman on builds and schemes, but shadow clocks in higher than his brothers by a significant margin. he's the oldest, so to him go the trade secrets and the "mature" complex tasks of building boss robots and such.
plus, shadow is the most physically strong and sturdy of the boys, and he’s the most quiet. he doesn’t voice his needs or complain. he doesn’t try to goad eggman into conversation. he only speaks when spoken to while they’re in the workshop, and only in a short, truncated way to keep eggman from lashing out at him. he’s precise, detail-oriented, and follows instructions well. he only does what he's told, he doesn't add any of his own ideas or "fixes" to projects. he’s a good assistant. he would make an excellent robot.
shadow stays deeply afraid of authority figures for a long time.
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Hey, pretty soon I'll be playing a friend of mine is gonna be DMing Tyranny Of Dragons for me and a couple of friends, and I can't decide whether I should play a Monk (probably Open Hand, maybe Kensei) or a Ranger (either Beastmaster or Horizon Walker), 'cause I've never played either of those classes, nor has anyone at the tables I've played. Can you tell me a little about your experiences with these classes?
The Ranger has been one of my favourite classes throughout the editions of D&D in terms of flavour, and I’ve had some fun with monks as well. In 5th edition, both took a fair bit of a hit in utility (individual and within group dynamics) and power at pretty much all ranges. The Ranger was propped back up a little bit in Unearthed Arcana in the revised ranger archetype, but both are still largely considered at best middle of the road classes, and at worst, the lowest tier of classes in the game in utility and character.
That’s not to say they can’t be fun and have a lot of flavour, and still find use. If you’ve watched Critical Role, you can see Vex and Beau weren’t useless by any stretch. No class is junk in 5e due to the improved parity compared to some past editions. So power and utility aside, if you feel drawn to any class/subclass, and you want to dive into its particular brand of flavour, then I say go for it. I would gauge the rest of the party’s makeup in making your decision, because group synergy is important, but you have to make yourself happy, too, right?
Anywho, I’ll break down my take on both.
When it comes to Monks, I like Open Hand the best. If you want to have a Monk-style gameplay with weapons, then Mystic or Fighter are probably better options with some more flair and utility involved than Kensei imo, but if that’s the route you want to take, it’d be alright. However, Open Hand has quivering palm, which is pretty incredible late game as far as damage and flexible timing from a single person through 3 ki pts and an action. If you do ever reach level 17, I would recommend multiclassing after that if you’re allowed, since the rest of the Monk’s class progression is kind of junk in comparison, and it could use some much needed utility from 3 levels of another class. Anywho, I like open hand not just for the flavor of being a class that’s capable of being an unarmed beast in battle, but also because of the way it can work in alignment with fighters who can also control the battlefield, like any fighter with a sentinel/polearm master. The ability to shove an enemy up to 15ft with one of your flurry attacks, launching them into the range of a fighter who gets a free opp attack against them and can from then on lock down their movement with a successful hit? That can be an excellent tag team. The Monk isn’t excellent for utility, but the Open Hand technique is probably the best at providing utility in combat among all the monk disciplines. Like, another option after hitting with flurry of blows is to steal all reactions for the opponent until the end of your next turn. This can be especially helpful against casters, as stealing reactions = preventing counterspells. And Monks can get a lot of attacks = lots of attempts to disrupt concentration of enemy casters, so the open hand monk is especially helpful at being a designated mage wrecker with having the mobility to reach casters and the ability to destabilize them. It’s arguably the one thing (aside from unarmed damage) that (this one kind of) monks do better than just about anyone else, arguably.
Now, to Rangers.
Honestly, I don’t like beast-focused Rangers. I think they’re a lot of work in order to get the mechanical payoff most other classes can achieve without a lot of thought or effort. Generally, any class that can let me focus more on flavour and RP is one I’m going to prefer, and beast master’s just…unwieldy. A lot of people say the class is junk, and if you run it without getting into the headspace for optimizing, it’s probably going to be more of a frustrating experience than you’d have hoped for. With BMs, you’re managing not just your character, but your companion, and you have to keep up with the different mechanics of both, you need to be 100% on top of choices made while leveling up, you need to have a strong understanding of battlefield control and your companion’s capabilities from the get go, and you really ought to be the kind of player who is happy to take a backseat to everyone else in and out of combat because the way you’ll shine is by helping everyone else do what they do with a little bit higher odds of success than otherwise. Personally, I like playing that sort of character, but I can do all of that with other classes a lot easier, and usually better, so this isn’t the kind of archetype I’d choose for a character myself. If you really want to, and think it’s cool, go for it, though.
The first thing I’d do is ask if you can use the UA revised ranger instead of the PHB ranger if you’re going the beast route (it’s “beast conclave” archetype in UA). If your DM allows that and insists you choose your companion from the list provided here, take the wolf (pack tactics is v helpful, same with 40ft speed and being able to send enemies prone after attacking) or ape (climb 30ft, melee/ranged ability, good stat baselines).
The second thing you’ll need is to lock down a quality companion, and that can take a bit of wheeling and dealing with your DM to let you use one of the supplementary books as a source, which is especially necessary if you’re not able to use the revised ranger class from UA. You do not want a hawk, mastiff, or panther, the PHB offers some shit examples out of the gate (panther and hawk are only conditionally good if you’re only ever going to have your companion rushing around the map using the ‘help’ action, or scouting to some extent, and the latter becomes less useful and reliable the higher level you become). Don’t choose a CR 0 companion, or one under ¼. If you absolutely must use a hawk for character flavor, then a blood hawk that at least has pack tactics would be a must. But if you are hoping for a companion that can do damage, look for something with certain damage if it hits, like added poison damage. Look for good AC if you want a tank. Look for versatility in mobility and senses. Look for special abilities (the boar having a relentless ability where it’ll go back to 1HP if it falls below 0; the wolf spider has web walk and web sense which can really help with casters using web if players don’t want to wade into the difficult terrain or are having difficulty finding enemies caught in the web; etc.)
But yeah, beast-focused rangers will be best when they’re spamming the help action with their beasts, using their beasts to get enemies out of cover, using their beasts to help control the field and give others advantage/take advantage, etc. You need to be quick mentally to know what you want to do with your character and your companion each time your turn comes around (most DMs, myself included, aren’t going to let you have as much time as you need to figure out what you want to do on both fronts, so if you can’t juggle two characters at once without losing a step, it might not be the archetype for you). This type of ranger requires you to know exactly what you want to be able to accomplish for yourself and your party right out of the gate, so you’ll want to gauge what your party members will be specializing in, what they want to be able to do, and see if there’s a way to shape your ranger to aid in that, particularly in choosing a beast that can be the most effective in ensuring that. Group cohesion is the name of the game with this form of ranger, so you’ll want to consider race selection a part of this process, too. I’ve had one player bomb hard as a BM and re-roll a different ranger, and I’ve had a friend who ran one who was the group’s unsung hero a lot of the time during their campaign. If you’re looking at Vex from CR as inspiration, keep in mind she had an excellent set of stats from lvl 9 onwards, and plenty of magical weapons to make up for much of any class shortcomings as characters scale up…look at how often Trinket was useful (very rarely) and understand that the bear was essentially just flavour for most of the campaign, and Vex would have been considerable underpowered compared to the rest of the party if not for some considerable DM intervention in ways that make things a lot trickier for DMs (adding magical weapons/items can easily unbalance a campaign, and it’s a matter of experience in knowing how to dole them out without throwing balance aside…Matt Mercer’s comfortable handing out flying carpets and multiple +2AC items and superpowered magical weapons by level 9, I wouldn’t give them out before level 14 or 15 and it would really only be if a player was severely struggling and refused to re-roll a more appropriate character while dying or nearly dying most combats). Other classes and archetypes have features and abilities that scale as you level, some earn specific spells as they level up that others can’t get, etc., but with beast conclave rangers, it’s their beast that slightly improves in a few meaningful ways. So if you’re going that route, you need to commit to a great beasts that’s a great fit for you and your party, and you need to commit to making the absolute most out of them and knowing how to make the most out of them.
Horizon Walker’s a simpler archetype that has some badass spells, but the flavour for the class can be a bit…strange in some adventures. It might not fit well with Tyranny of Dragons, I’m not sure how much planar travel’s involved in that adventure. Which might not be a problem for the DM, or you. I still prefer the UA ranger conclaves, but out of the PHB ones, this one’s probably the best of the bunch, even if it’s mostly going to lean towards being a melee build (which, again, check your party comp to see if that’s something that is workable).
Anywho, those are my late night D&D ramblings. You can take my words with a grain of salt if you’d like, and as always the rule of cool applies…if you think it’s cool and you really want to go with something, go for it and I hope the DM will find a way to help you make it work, but yeah, these classes can be a bit of an uphill battle, though I suppose potentially a rewarding challenge if that’s what you’re looking for.
Best of luck with the campaign, I’m sure you’ll have fun!
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