#it was super effective! [-10 hp]

[itsdefinitely]

would you draw...lex and either joey!ethan or mariah!ethan

you found my weakness

[uncreative-cryptid]

Forte Circuits and Everything I've Learned About It

this is gonna be a yap fest i apologize in advance

@oldworldpoolhall

Okay, first thing i think it's important to note is the forte circuit bar.

this is really important, cause when you deal DMG to enemies, it will often fill up. I'm going to use simple language cause the problem I have with the game is how confusing the language is and what it actually means. we're gonna call it the Mana Bar.

Hitting enemies means you get Mana, and with Mana, you get the ability to throw hands even harder or do something fancy.

However, you can only collect so much mana before it is at max and will no longer collect.

In the case of wuthering waves, having full mana can mean a lot of things but mainly: consuming the mana means stronger attack responses, such as your resonance liberation.

some characters, when they have full mana, will actually replace their element skill; example of this is Mortefi, who when his mana is full, replaces the skill with a stronger, different attack - but this does not consume his mana.

Resonance Liberation will consume the mana, allowing a character to go "all out" in a sense - and with wuwa terms, almost seems like characters are either overclocking or close to overclocking (not confirmed, but with the way calcharo's appearance changes with his liberation, i suspect it's pretty damn close to overclocking).

something you might also notice:

mana bars with splits.

when a mana bar has a split like this, this means that the consumption of mana is not "all or nothing", like mortefi. the mana needs to only be fills to that split to be effective. in calcharo's terms, he has 3 splits (wuwa calls his mana "cruelty", numbers dont mean a lot of things here unless you actually care about it. i dont, it makes things confusing).

the splits can allow a new thing to happen, where only part of the mana is consumed and allows for different attacks to do more damage - some of these can affect the resonance skill and some can affect normal/heavy attacks.

the only thing you really need to understand about the mana bar is that the more mana you have, the more you can do with it. the more you actually hit the enemy with normal attacks, the more mana you will gain.

next thing to note:

the skills page.

this shows you all your skills and basics of your skills, including your forte circuit.

The actual circuit consists of 3 total nodes. The forte, and 2 inherit skills.

Here you can see that Mortefi's "mana" is called Annoyance .. and i really hate that they do this because it's confusing when reading between characters, but what can you do. Again, numbers don't mean shit. What this is telling you is that when Mortefi's Annoyance (aka, Mana) is full, his resonance skill changes and becomes more powerful (dealing attribute "element" damage). It also tells you how to build up this annoyance.

in simple, general terms: hit the enemy, get mana.

since your oc seems to be going for sub DPS, i suggest looking at Mortefi's skills.

His skills mainly deals with ATK and attribute (fusion) bonus increases.

Inherit skills, once unlocked, will likely serve to increase the character's ATK, DEF, or HP. In some cases, it may also incease Crit rate or DMG. Usually, it is a percentage.

At your basics for a character, it's good to know a few things:

Normal Attack node 1 (max 10 upgrades): this is a rundown of your Basic, Heavy, Mid-Air attack, Mid-Air Heavy (if applicable but most characters do not have this), and Dodge Counter

Normal Attack node 2 is usually going to be healing/attribute dmg or crit dmg

Normal Attack node 3 will be crit/healing/attribute dmg again, just a higher %.

Normal Attack and Intro skill are mirrors - the damage % on the nodes are the same, except for node 1.

same with resonance skill and resonance liberation, the nodes will usually be the same for node 2 and node 3.

Other things that can impact a character's strength:

Echoes ; these are super interesting and kind of important, as a good echo set can really make a difference. I can definitely go into detail on these later if needed.

Weapon ; a good weapon, while not always make or break, will definitely allow a resonator with no built skills to still be solid enough to stand on their own.

Combat style ; if you're anything like me, i subscribe to the "just hit harder" books, so a lot of my characters can not only take a hit, but will hit like a damn truck. crit rates might be higher because i prefer to hit more consistently, and any extra damage is just a bonus.

Enemy Type ; different tacet discords are going to require different things to keep an eye out for. while generally speaking, most the more common tacets aren't going to be of much problem and typically only have 1 or 2 attacks, the more elite and stronger tacets are going to have different ways to fight them - knowing their patterns is key to successful dodges and counters, while also knowing that some you cannot just hit harder and brute force through (lumiscale constructs my destested) - an observant resonator will take the time to watch these particular tacet discords and be prepared for how they attacked.

you can't always dodge an attack, but knowing a pattern of attacks and knowing the signs of when they're going to unleash a certain attack will definitely incease the ability to dodge, or to get the heck out of dodge before you become a grave marker on the side of the road.

[anim-ttrpgs]

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy and Warhammer 40,000

Super interesting video by Questing Beast about some of the earliest ancestors to what would come to be known as a "tabletop roleplaying game," and the wargaming roots of TTRPGs as a whole.

I, the lead rules writer for Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy have been a Warhammer 40,000 player for years, and I love to brag about the way that Eureka as a TTRPG is in touch with its wargaming ancestry, both in ways you would and wouldn’t expect.

Playing Warhammer 40,000 has helped me get a good sense for dice probability, especially with regards to the D6s that Eureka uses, and is one of the things that gave me the idea for how Eureka handles firearms, particularly those with high rates of fire.

In Eureka, one single hit from a bullet is enough to incapacitate a human character, and automatic weapons can fire up to 10 or even 12 bullets in a single action. Each one of these bullets has the potential to be devastating if it hits.

Lots of factors affect the probably of a shot hitting a target, and most of them affect it by making the probability go down. Shooting 1-3 shots in a single turn will be rolled by the standard and highly predictable 2D6 that Eureka normally uses, but beyond that number, D12s are used for each shot, which not only makes the rolling of 4+ shots easier because you can scoop a bunch of D12s up in one hand and throw them all at once without having to keep distinct pairs together, but also makes each individual dice roll swingier, and slightly more likely to be a lower number.

Therefore, just like in real life, automatic weapons increase accuracy by increasing the volume of shots fired, increasing the chance that at least one of them will hit. Because any given 9mm fired is just as deadly as another, whether it’s fired by itself or as part of a large burst.

It was Warhammer 40,000’s mechanics that filter massive numbers of attacks through Accuracy, Wounding, and Armor Saves, when only a few of these attacks need to get through in order to be effective, that helped put me onto this idea.

There is also the fact that, despite primarily being a neo-noir Investigation game, Eureka’s rules also allow for players easily controlling multiple characters at a time and the potential for more militaristic scenarios, with each individual PC being super fragile with simple HP that is super easy to keep track of even across multiple character sheets.

Then, there are quite a few things about Eureka that one might not expect to have come from a wargame.

For one, we get a lot of praise for how each section of the Eureka rulebook is ended with a series of bulletpoints that summarize all the key rules and ideas in the paragraphs above. Well, I got the idea to do that from Warhammer 40,000 rulebooks.

There is also a mechanic in the past few editions of Warhammer 40,000 called “Command Points.” Command Points are a limited resource that can be spent to gain small advantages in the game, such as rerolling a single die, or activating the special abilities of certain units. There is a set of universal Command Point abilities that all factions share, as well as every faction having their own set of Command Point abilities unique only to them.

It is no coincidence that Eureka sports a very similar mechanic. You can find more information about this by reading "Investigation and the Eureka! System" in the Eureka prerelease rulebook, which you can download for free right here, but the short version is that as investigators investigate, they gain Eureka! Points. It can take an awful lot of investigating to gain a single Eureka! Point, which makes them a very scarce resource, but they can be spent on valuable bonuses, such as retroactively un-failing a previously failed Investigation check and getting the clue that would have been obtained from it (We call that a “Eureka! Moment!), or adding an extra D6 to an important roll, increasing the probability of success. Those are just the universal ones, however, that every PC has. Like Command Point abilities in Warhammer 40,000, there’s a set of universal ones, but most of them are exclusive.

Certain Traits unlock other Eureka! Point abilities exclusive to PCs who have those Traits, one of my favorite of which being the Eureka! Point ability that the Final Girl Trait unlocks, which allows spending a Eureka! Point to decrease the probably of success for an aggressive monster’s roll, helping simulate the trope of the “final girl” being able to just barely slip out from the jaws of death due to a sudden stroke of luck.

Another one of my favorites is a set of Eureka! Point abilities unlocked by the monster-exclusive Unkillable Trait. These abilities allow monsters, PC or NPC, to suddenly and unexpectedly return to the narrative after seemingly having been killed by losing all their HP. The more Eureka! Points spent, the sooner more immediately the monster can return.

If any of this sounds interesting to you, you can back our Kickstarter before it ends on May 10th and get a copy on release! We are also doing physical copies now!

Oh, and just one more thing..

Eureka Mention!

If you want to try before you buy, you can download a free demo of the prerelease version from our website or our itch.io page!

If you’re interested in a more updated and improved version of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy than the free demo you got from our website, subscribe to our Patreon where we frequently roll our new updates for the prerelease version!

You can also support us on Ko-fi, or by checking out our merchandise!

Join our TTRPG Book Club At the time of writng this, Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is the current game being played in the book club, and anyone who wants to participate in discussion, but can’t afford to make a contribution, will be given the most updated prerelease version for free! Plus it’s just a great place to discuss and play new TTRPGs you might not be able to otherwise!

We hope to see you there, and that you will help our dreams come true and launch our careers as indie TTRPG developers with a bang by getting us to our base goal and blowing those stretch goals out of the water, and fight back against WotC's monopoly on the entire hobby. Wish us luck.

[aptericia]

I commissioned @sazuka57 for these WONDERFUL pixel sprites of Shang Bu-Huan and Lin Xue-Ya from Thunderbolt Fantasy in the style of the Octopath Traveler series!

A while back, I had created information for them as if they were NPCs in OT2 (season 3 of tbf introduces interdimensional travel, after all!), and I was considering posting them when I decided I really wanted some visuals too. Sazuka did a spectacular job with them (their poses?? all the details on their incredibly complicated outfits?? aaaaah) and was super friendly and easy to work with!

Info below the cut:

Traveling Swordsman (Shang Bu-Huan)

Strength: 10

Skills: Formless Rogue Sword (1-3 highly powerful sword attacks on all foes), Qi Punch (strong physical attack, chance to lower opponent’s physical defense), Qi Healing (restore a small amount of HP to a single ally and remove their status ailments), Attack (Sword)

Information:

Age: 46 Details: After making one too many enemies in his home country, he fled with the intent to rid himself of his burdens. Unfortunately for him, he has so far only managed to acquire even more burdens, such as the enigmatic young man who followed him to Solista. Information Gleaned: None

Items:

Formless Sword (Sword; Phys. Atk +1, Speed +45, Evasion +45) Umbrella (fetches a modest price if sold)

Summon (x4):

Business Partners: Lucky Break (Have a 1% chance to receive purchases for free) Dance Session: Gentle Rhythm (Restore a small amount of HP to the target)

Battle:

Weaknesses: Dagger, Bow, Ice, Wind Shields: 7 Item Drop: Fool's Leaf Learned Skills: Formless Rogue Sword (consume all your SP, then unleash a sword attack on all foes proportional to the amount of SP consumed)

Path actions:

Inquire: Lv. 40 Guide: Lv. 65 Challenge: Lv. 30 Befriend: Stone-Roasted Rice x15 Soothe: Herb of Serenity x1 Ambush: Lv. 60 Hire: $65,000 Coerce: 5 shields Bribe: $5,000

Mysterious Man (Lin Xue-Ya)

Strength: 10

Skills: Misty Veil (cause a single foe’s next 2 physical attacks to miss), Smoke Pipe (Confuse a single foe for 5-7 turns), Empoison, Panacea

Information:

Age: unknown Details: Pretends to be a humble traveler, or whatever other role suits the occasion, but in reality is a master thief known as the “Enigmatic Gale”. Switching from villain to hero at the drop of a hat, his true intentions are impossible to know. He came from a faraway land in pursuit of a certain swordsman he has taken an interest in. Information Gleaned: None

Items:

Bottle of Befuddling Dust Herb Elixir Revitalizing Jam Herb of Serenity

Summon (x3):

Business Partners: Silver Tongue (Receive 20% off purchases) Dance Session: Bewildering Ballad (Cause a curious effect to occur 1 time)

Battle:

Weaknesses: Staff, Dark Shields: 5 Item Drop: Refreshing Jam Learned Skills: Misty Veil (cause a single foe's next 1/2/3/4 physical attacks to miss) (20 SP)

Path actions:

Inquire: Lv. 20 Guide: Lv. 30 Challenge: Lv. 40 Befriend: Octopath Bowl x3 Soothe: Herb of Serenity x3 Ambush: Lv. 60 Hire: $30,000 Coerce: 6 shields Bribe: $3,000

[brightlybound]

Which hp characters had their glow up at Hogwarts and then got hit with the ugly stick in their 20’s? I want an unhinged list lol

Lmaoooo. Unhinged, you say?

Cormac McLaggen: started off as Mr. Big n' Beefy, then got into smoking mandrake leaves. Side effects include: limp hair and limp dick.

Oliver Wood: resident Quidditch hottie, never knew when to quit. Forgot to apply Sunscreen Charms 9 out of 10 times and became as leathery as a Quaffle by his early 20s.

Xenophilius Lovegood: super hot stoner with funky fashion tastes. Sampled far too many of his wife's experimental potions and started to believe you could only shower when it rained and brush your teeth when the moon was full.

Sybill Trelawney: smelled like incense and was a super mysterious, sexual deviant. All the boys wanted her, but she only dove into 😼. Then she was slapped with The Seeing Stick and went cuckoo for cocoa puffs. Why would you bother brushing your hair when you could see the future?

[sometimes-shiny-pidgey]

Tumblr, the Pokémon

I held a few polls a while back to create tumblr as a Pokémon. Here’s the final result in one post!

Type: Dark/Fairy

Pseudo Legendary

Held item: Vanilla Extract (5% chance of poisoning the opponent when hit with a physical move)

Ability: Flame Body

Moveset:

Checkmark Crash (Fairy) - %50 accuracy psychical move 5/5 PP - Always super effective move that only works on checkmark opponents. Damage is multiplied by the amount of checkmarks.

Checkmark Chase (Dark) - %85 accuracy with psychical damage 15/15 PP - If target is checkmarked it takes damage and is burned / if target is not checkmarked it takes damage and is poisoned.

Blaze Beam (Dark) - %10 accuracy 5/5 PP - Charges up one turn then is fired the next. It is a one hit ko if it connects but if not the user becomes confused while their attack raises sharply.

Play Rough (Fairy)

—

Base stats:

132 Speed

138 Attack

42 Defense

36 Sp. Defense

96 Sp. Attack

156 HP

[prettycottonmouthlamia]

So some Ulpianus thoughts as I go through his kit and do some of the math out

-Base statistics wise, he's extremely similar to Hoederer, having slightly more HP in exchange for very slightly less ATK -This of course doesn't matter once he gets stacks of his talent going. At 10 stacks, he'll have the highest HP and ATK of any Crusher in the game (even outpacing Wind Chimes with her Vigor buff) -Regaining 100 HP when hit, and 160 HP when under 50% HP, is actually probably not enough on its own to really keep Ulpianus alive through sustained damage. It is very good against damage over time effects though, with the possible exception of Zaaro's curse which is very funny

-S1 looks pretty okay. It's notable for being a Pull in an entire class who does not have one, and it's a pretty beefy attack scale on an ATK stat that can almost be 2000. I'm not sure this ends up being a viable portion of kit in most situations, especially since his other two skills seem generally better. -S2 looks...interesting. I'm not actually sure this skill is "good", at least in part because of its massive 70 SP cost. This can be reduced significantly (to about 47 SP) through Unchained's PUM-Y module, but 47 seconds is still a long time for what is supposed to be a lane holder. While the skill is up though, it is quite powerful, especially since it increases the healing from his talent to 200/320 per hit, but 3 Block is also really risky on a Crusher. Hoederer's S2 also suffers from this issue. -S3 is just good. A frankly disgustingly high ATK buff on top of a scaling attack buff means that anything he hits in his initial blast is probably capital F Fucked and he'll take advantage of the six second stun to get two more additional hits in, adding in that the range on this skill is long, let's him be proactive in lane holding, and potentially even allows him to hold two lanes at once is bonkers. 17s charge time with PUM-Y btw.

We probably should talk about the hunter buffs btw, because Ulpianus arguably benefits the most out of any Hunter with them.

-Gladiia: On her own, Gladiia provides a 237.02 HP/s Regen buff to Ulpianus thanks to his titanic HP stat, which increases to 279.02 HP/s with his talent stack maxed out. That's just generically hefty as an regen in general, especially since its healing effectiveness cannot be reduced in any way. The 30%...psuedo-Sanctuary (does Sanctuary actually stack with Gladiia's module?) is also rather incredible for him, being a huge HP buff inherently and making his HP gain talent even stronger. -Andreana: 22 ASPD matters the absolute most to Ulpianus thanks to his titanically long attack interval, reducing it from 2.5 seconds to ~2.05 seconds. In addition, Andreana benefits the most from the 600 Max HP Ulpianus can give her thanks to her low base HP. -Skadi: +24% ATK and +20% Max HP on the Abyssal Hunter with the highest ATK and HP of any class in the game. Easy. Honestly maybe we should have seen the Crusher class coming. Worth noting though that the ATK buff is extremely diluted once his skills are up, however. -Specter: 5% extra damage is honestly fairly good for him. On one hand, his ATK stat gets so high it probably isn't super distinguishable from ATK buffs in terms of effect, but during skill, this buff won't get diluted either. -Specter the Unchained: Maybe the biggest partner for Ulpianus outside of Gladiia, because he really wants the extra SP per second she gives, especially for S2.

In total, what does Ulpianus look like with all the Abyssal Hunter buffs?

HP: 10,158 (11,358 with his Talent) ATK: 2,100.56 (2,400.56 with his Talent) HP Regen: 355.53 HP/s (397.53 HP/s with his Talent)

This is just at base too. While the ATK and HP buffs do end up diluted from his own skill buffs, just looking at his stats while his S2 is up:

HP: 14,221.2 (15,421.2 with his Talent) ATK: 4,810.96 (5,110.95 with his Talent) HP Regen: 497.742 HP/s (539.742 HP/s with his Talent)

So...is Ulpianus good? If you're using him in Abyssal Hunters, definitely, and honestly he's disgustingly good looking there. But outside of that remains to be seen. I think his S3 in general is just so strong that there's a very good chance he remains a good, usable operator outside of his niche, just like all the Abyssal Hunters.

[jev-urisk]

OC fight game tag!! 🥊✨

Thanks to @the-golden-comet (here) and @tragedycoded (here) for the tag! I got way into this one lmao. Here's 🌐7 Circles🌐,: Immortal Combat. Ready? FIGHT!

(Some spoilers ahead~)

Klaus 🌻

Health: 11 Strength: 8 Speed: 6 Armor: 6 Cunning: 7

Special Attacks: Fae Grace, after a warm-up period Klaus' dodge becomes more effective. Seelie Fae, bonus attacks and +1HP unlocked in arenas with plant life. Climber, able to scale parts of the environment unavailable to other characters to avoid large attacks or add power to tackles. Hidden Rage, combo attacks have 20% more power right after Klaus takes a hit. Healer, able to revive downed teammates.

Weakneses: Healer, cannot perform coup de gras. Fae blooded, iron weapons do 50% more damage to Klaus and items coated with Faebane do 2x damage and have a chance to one-shot Klaus. If an opponent uses Insult Opponent's Mother against Klaus it will always be super effective.

Idle Animation: Standing with his arms crossed, occasionally checking messages on his com-ring. If left idle and not in the Nexis location he will begin climbing the background environment. If left idle in a location with plantlife he will interact with the closest plant.

Kazimier 💋

Health: 8 Strength: 5 Speed: 6 Armor: 3 Cunning: 13

Special Attacks: Shapeshift, Kazimier will appear to be a different character which has a chance to debuff opponent attacks and change the size of Kazimier's hit box. Luring Gaze, unless opponent has status 'Asexual' this move will cause character movement drift towards Kazimier as long as the effect is active. Charm, if opponent sexuality matches Kazimier's current gender appearance a debuff will be applied to strength and armor equal to that character's Horny Percentage. Perceptive, passive ability where for every 20 seconds of the fight Kazimier has an increasing chance to lock on to his enemy's weaknesses and ignore a percentage of their armor rating. Skewer, if Kazimier manages to grapple opponent, or opponent is otherwise incapacitated a moment Kazimier will perform a finishing move of placing his claws against a vital point (animation options include skull, throat, and heart) before shapeshifting the claws entirely through said location for an instant one-shot.

Weakneses: Any damage Kazimier receives will interrupt his special attacks. Electrical attacks are 20% more effective and impose a cooldown period Kazimier must recover from in order to shapeshift again. If an attack causes the bleeding status to Kazimier, it will reduce cunning by 4 and has a chance to one-shot him.

Idle Animation: Standing with his hands on his hips, inspecting his nails and shapeshifting them long and short, flipping a coin through his fingers, stretching his arms above his head, looking to the camera and saying 'What're you lookin' at?' 'Let's play~' 'Time to fuck or get fucked, bitch', etc. depending on player's score last time they selected Kazimier.

Seeker 🌠

Health: 7 Strength: 9 Speed: 6 Armor: 7 Cunning: 7

Special Attacks: Quardobracial, Seeker is able to continue attacking while grappled or grappling and has extra equipment slots. Arcane Sense, Seeker has a 15% chance to remain unaffected by any arcane attacks. Arcane Knowledge (must be unlocked), able to selectively buff and debuff any stat of any character within a short range. Arcane Strike (must be unlocked), this move damages both HP and MP and has a 50% chance of applying a cooldown timer to any magic abilities.

Weakneses: Until all abilities are unlocked Seeker is not a particularly powerful character.

Idle Animation: Waving to opposing character politely with their north hand (story mode may unlock different gestures with different hands), saying 'let's have a good match!', fixing their very long braid, humming a tune with their eyes closed. Their hands wring together in concern if the opponent is Val.

Valian 🐁

Health: 5 Strength: 4 Speed: 10 Armor: 4 Cunning: 9

Special Attacks: Smol, Val has a smaller than average hitbox, and is able to move between parts of the arena other characters cannot. Survival Instinct, Val's strength and speed get a +2 when his HP reaches 30%. Filtch, Able to steal equipped items from other characters (his speed+cunning vs theirs). Street Rat, +2 to cunning and buff to Filtch ability in urban areas.

Weakneses: As the character who is weakest and has the lowest health, players need have great sense over the controls and dodge maneuvers in particular for Val to be a viable main.

Idle Animation: Tail flicking back and forth in anticipation, turning his head to look around the environment for food or shiny. if left long enough he will steal, if he stole food he will immediately crouch over it and eat it.

7C taglist: @gioiaalbanoart @biblicallyaccuratefruitbat @katenewmanwrites @lychhiker-writes @autism-purgatory

@wyked-ao3 @cowboybrunch @zackprincebooks @smellyrottentrees @aalinaaaaaa

@quillswriting @nbkuhn @ddgraywrites @desastreus @theglitchywriterboi

@shanakin-skywalker @honeybewrites @sincerelydorky (hmu to be +/-)

[howlingday]

Lancaster Labor VIII

Part I Part II Part III Part IV Part V Part VI Part VII

Jaune: How do you feel, Ruby?

Ruby: I... I guess if I had to describe it with one word, I'd say it was shocking. Like, I didn't think my vagina would be able to stretch that big, but it did.

Jaune: I... guess I can understand that. The placenta was also really big, huh?

Ruby: It kind looked like that liver you cooked the other night.

----------------------------------------

Ruby: It's still amazing to me. I gave birth to a baby. Women's bodies... We're so amazing that our bodies can even do it at all! Mysterious, yet so amazing...

----------------------------------------

Nurse: Miss Rose, Dr. Oobleck is here for your next procedure. I must warn you that it might be a little painful.

Ruby: Um... Okay?

Oobleck: Good evening, Miss Rose! I am Dr. Oobleck, and I am here to sew the tear in your perineum.

Ruby: My what?

Jaune: It's, uh, the place between your butt and your vagina.

Ruby: HUH?!

Ruby: (Thinking) SO IT WASN'T BIG ENOUGH AT ALL?!. I KNEW IT!.

--------------------------------------

Ruby: After that, I spent the rest of the day resting in my room away from the baby. I finally got to play my gacha games, and it's a good thing, too, because tomorrow was the big day; my first day as a real mom.

------------------------------------

Ruby: First task; breastfeeding! Alright, nipples! It's your time to shine~!.

Ruby's Nipple - Lv. 200

Ruby: ...WHOA! Y-You're sucking a lot harder than I imagined!

Nurse: Hm... It looks like she only drank two ccs.

Ruby: ONLY TWO?!

Nurse: Don't worry! This is just the beginning! Some mothers aren't able to produce milk at all on their first day!

Ruby: Oh, uh, right! Just the beginning!

Ruby: (10:00) Ow...

Ruby: (13:00) Ow!

Ruby: (16:00) OW!

Ruby: Geez!. I had no idea my nipples would hurt this much from all this breastfeeding. AND THERE'S A BLOOD BLISTER, TOO?!. WHAT THE HECK?!.

Ruby's Nipple - HP: Critical Baby Rose used Suck! IT'S SUPER EFFECTIVE!

------------------------------------------

Ruby: My first night alone with the baby was obviously going to be nerve-wracking for me. And the fact Jaune went home to get it ready for the baby that night was just all the more aggravating for me. At one point, she started crying for no reason at all! I just fed her, her diaper was clean, and I was a first-time mom alone with her! What could I do?!

Ruby: Then I got an idea! I could play the music from my game and that should calm her down!

Ruby: ...But then I noticed I was playing a video game in front of my crying baby. I was the worst mother in the world.

Ruby: I didn't sleep a wink at all that night. When the nurse came in, she said it was time to breastfeed, so I was kinda stuck to try. After I barely got any out, my three hours between were spent eating so much, my belly felt like it was going to burst! It was an endless cycle of eating and feeding.

Ruby: Then it was time to be discharged, and Jaune was there to pick me up. I was finally home, and Jaune did an amazing job getting the house ready!

-----------------------------------------

Jaune: Here, I put a swing in our room so we can both be here when she's asleep.

Ruby: Oh, thank you! Thank you~!

Jaune: I'll keep an eye on her while you rest.

Ruby: Oh, thank you! My nipples are KILLING me! (Taps scroll) Maybe there's some advice online that can tell me what to do. Hm... I could use a cream safe for babies and cover my nipples in plastic wrap.

Ruby: Wait... WHY IS THIS SO FAMILIAR?!

---------------------------------------

Ruby: Unfortunately, I couldn't keep up with my baby's feeding schedule, so I had to use a formula to replace my breast milk until I was ready. But it's still so scary, because her neck is so wobbly! And sometimes, after she's done eating, she doesn't burp right away! AND- And when she sleeps, she's so still that I think she might be dying!

----------------------------------------

Ruby: (Sobbing into the couch) I'M THE WORST MOM EVER! It feels like the only thing I can do is worry and freak out over the most tiny insignificant things!

Jaune: (Carrying dinner bowls) There, there. Just think, this is only the beginning, and she won't be like this forever. (Hands bowl) And don't forget that I'm here, too. We'll figure this thing out.

Ruby: ...Yeah.

--------------------------------------

Ruby: Oh! Look! I made 15 ccs!

Jaune: Great! (Licks lips) Blech! Yeah, this stuff tastes terrible.

Ruby: Hey! Don't just drink my breast milk!

Ruby: Okay, sweetie~! Time for your first taste of warm water... Haha! Look how silly you look~!

Ruby: (Doing squats) Up and down, one! Up and down, two~! (Giggles) You're smiling~!

Ruby: Hah... You look so peaceful sleeping. (Taking pictures, Sniffles) Wah~! You're so tiny, but so strong and so brave~!

Ruby: (Sighs) I wish I could have heard your first cries, but I was so out of it after the birth, I barely noticed when they put you in my arms.

--------------------------------------

Ruby: To be honest, I don't really know what it means to be motherly, and the only thing I really felt about her was how much responsibility I was going to have taking care of you, but day by day, I fell more and more in love with you, my baby girl.

Ruby: Maybe someday, I'll feel like a proper mom.

[evilisk]

Insightful Aid Tier List V2 (Low Rarity)

Decided to revise my Tier List for Reverse 1999's Roguelike Mode (A Series of Dusks) specifically when you're playing the Insightful Aid Catalyst. I have decided to do two lists, one for low rarity characters, the other for high rarity characters.

Explanations (AKA a very long wall of text) below:

Busted:

La Source: I don't want to re-explain myself too much but tl;dr she has the best Ult for blocking enemy Ults. It's better than Control since most of the Roguelike bosses have full or partial Control Immunity, while only one boss (the alternate final boss) is actually immune to Moxie reduction (even then, only during its second phase). It's really busted on this Catalyst since Insightful Aid lets you spawn any of your party member's Ults for only 10 Stamina.

Strong Ult

Bunny Bunny: Her Incantations are mediocre but her Ult is still pretty unique for its Mass Heal + Purify effect (almost all the other 5* and 6* healers provide one effect or the other but not both). It's even more handy if you're a new account and don't have those top tier healers yet.

Good Ult, Strong Incantation

Twins Sleep: They have two really good Incantations that steal the thunder from other low rarity characters. They have the option of a Mental DEF Debuff (like Poltergeist) or a Critical DEF Debuff (like Erick). The Critical DEF debuff is honestly more valuable, it's as strong as Isolde's Crit debuff while also inflicting Weakness on all enemies. Twins Sleep also have a decent enough Ult. Not unique (Diggers and Baby Blue with debuffs can also inflict Nightmare) but it does give her an advantage over her low rarity contemporaries (who cannot use their Ults to block enemy turns)

ONiON / Leilani: I mentioned this in the earlier tier list, but these two (and Rabies) have the strongest Rank 3 Attack Incantations of any low rarity. At P5, they hit for 450% base damage + 160% if the target is debuffed in any way (making sure the enemy is debuffed first isn't super hard on this mode). That formula adds up to a 610% damage attack. Some low rarity characters can do 600% damage... with their Ults (Pavia, Twins Sleep, Erick, Mondlicht). Not only does the Insightful Aid Catalyst lets you cheat out these Rank 3 Incantations for only a bit of Stamina, but it also powers them up. Shamane or Six + Aid ONiON / Leilani is a legitimate strategy that will win you runs, just make sure you don't run out of Stamina (this isn't hard to do btw, with Insightful Aid you get refunded Stamina back if you kill enemies with Aid Incantations. Yes, this Catalyst rewards you for spamming these OP Rank 3 Incantations).

ONiON and Leilani are basically interchangeable here, the only difference is their Ults. ONiON can grant 2 stacks of Sturdiness while Leilani can grant 2 Moxie to allies. Leilani seems stronger overall but if you luck into certain Moxie increasing artefacts, like the Morale Pipe, then ONiON's Ult will have more utility.

Eagle: Another character with a pretty strong Rank 3 Attack. At Rank 3, her 1-target attack hits for 450% + 100% damage if debuffed. It's "only" 550% damage but it has a built in leech effect, meaning it's a 550% damage attack that can bring the caster back to full HP. Her Ult is pretty unique, it comes with a built in "excess Critical rate converted to Critical damage" and some characters can take advantage of this (Lilya, Blonney). This does require you to pick up certain artefacts that give Lucky though.

Decent Ult Or Incantation

AliEn T: I had them higher on my previous list but bumped them down. On paper they're quite nice. Two good Incantations (an Attack as strong as Eagle's, though without the leech effect, and a Counter with -60% Damage reduction and built in Taunt that Kakania and NewBabel will love). Their Ult can also block all non-Ult actions from enemies for a turn. The problem is that, besides their Counter (which is ultimately pretty niche), you may have better options. ONiON and Leilani are still the best Rank 3 Aid Attackers and Baby Blue has a similar Ult but she can also block enemy Ults. If you don't have Baby Blue, though, you may get some use out of AliEn T.

Darley: Between them and Apple (AKA the two low rarity characters that can heal after using their attack) I think Darley is the clear winner due to their Ult, which gives extra Moxie to all party members. Darley, however ranks much lower than Leilani who has a similar Ult, since they don't have an OP Rank 3 Attack to spam like she does.

Zima: La Source is better for blocking Ults in most situations but if your La Source isn't P5 yet, and you don't have other high rarity Ult blockers, Zima can be an okay alternate option. This is only if you have a really new account though.

Pavia: He's in a similar situation to ONiON and Leilani but for Mass Attacks instead of 1-target attacks. His high HP Rank 3 attacks hits for 300% + 155% damage. This outperforms a bunch of higher rarity characters (at P0, though even P5 Bkornblume's Mass Attack loses to P5 Pavia). The reason Pavia isn't as high as the others is because 455% isn't as huge as 610% damage. His Ult is also extremely mediocre. I would rather cop the slightly lower damage on Bkornblume's Mass Attack for Bkornblume's significantly better Ult vs. Pavia's bland Ult that only does damage.

Cristallo: The only reason she's here is for her Debuff. It's very easy for her to land her -40% Reality DEF with this Catalyst. Her other Incantation also exists. It's not the best buff but it is 1 stack of Sturdiness to all characters and not everyone has Medicine Pocket or Voyager on their accounts.

Niche

Poltergeist: Like I said before, Twins Sleep basically steals the one good thing about this character (the Mental DEF debuff). Her other Attack isn't worth mentioning. Her Ult is super niche. It does let her Taunt and avoid enemy attacks, but the dodge only works vs Reality (so you need to know the enemy damage type in advance). The only use I can think for her is if you need the Mental Debuff, but also need TS' Crit Debuff. Even then, you might have Baby Blue as an alternate Mental DEF Debuff option.

TTT: Basically the low rarity, low budget version of X. She can also Dispel and can also control when enemies use their Ults. The big difference is that TTT has to inflict Disconcert early, no blocking enemy Ults on the turn they're about to be used like with X. Very mediocre CC overall but if you don't have X or Baby Blue, she may be better than nothing.

Erick: Like I said before, Twins Sleep basically steals the one good thing about this character (the Crit DEF debuff). There is one silver lining to Erick, her Ult isn't too shabby on the Razor fight. It can remove Razor's buffs AND Disarm him, preventing him from using an Attack for a turn. It's not the best option but it is an option if you don't have specific characters (like Charlie).

Oliver Fog: Pretty similar to Cristallo except he doesn't have a useful debuff. He has a slightly better Ult than Cristallo, but you shouldn't be bringing Cristallo for her (awful) Ult anyway.

John Titor: She's similar to AliEn T. Nice skills on paper, but usually outdone by stronger options (Yenisei for the Shield + Purify Ult, ONiON and Leilani for the Rank 3 Attack). Not bad if you don't have Yenisei, though I do think Semmelweis + Aid John Titor is a fun combo if you run the self-Buff / Heal.

Ms. Moissan: Can be used if you don't have any Shielders at all (like Tennant, Ms. NewBabel or Ezra). She also has a CC Ult that's basically the reverse of Satsuki and Druvis' Petrify effect. Is fine at the start of the run, but I think you would be better looking for some auto-shield artefacts. The best recommendation, especially for Insightful Aid, is Rabbit Marionette. It gives a free shield after every turn if you use an Aid Incantation, it also increases the Max Stamina limit.

Mondlicht: Unlike the others in this tier, she really doesn't have much going for her, but I didn't think she was as niche as the characters below her. She's basically a worse Pavia in terms of Incantations. I guess her Ult gives her a mini-Eternity Ult effect? That's about it.

Apple: Another "not niche OR really niche" character. I guess you can spam his attacks for free Healing and this may be an okay strategy if you're running Kakania on your party. Would not really recommend in most other situations though, Darley has the same gimmick but with a better Ult.

Really Niche (aka they have obscure combos, but would not recommend in most situations)

Sputnik: Has an interesting combo with NewBabel since you can combine NewBabel's Ult with Sputnik's Counter to infinitely drain enemy Moxie while also maxing out NewBabel's Moxie. The problem is that this isn't really a win condition for your party, it's just a way to stall out the fight. Also has a combo with Kakania + the artefact that turns Slot 1 into a Taunt tank.

Nick Bottom: Has shenanigans with Kakania and Semmelweis due to the HP drain but is really obscure otherwise.

Ms. Radio and Door: The self-killing Ults are obviously a bad idea. There are ways to avoid the kill condition, with either artefacts or Necrologist, but similar to Sputnik, this doesn't get you closer to winning fights, you're better off actually using your Ults to target enemies than for pure support.

Bette: She's not as niche as you'd think, since Insightful Aid makes it easy to cheat out Rank 3 Aid Incantations but doesn't really let you upgrade the Incantations of your front characters. Her Ult can help with this, though the reason Bette isn't higher is because the final area and boss completely screws with her Ult's effect (your Incantations get shuffled around every turn, and Bette needs two turns for her Empower to work. RIP Bette).

The Fool: The most redundant character in this mode. Several artefacts have the ability to inflict Corrode without you using the Fool at all (e.g. Piglet Chain, Everheart). You might think "well I can use the Fool to stack Corrode" except I tested it and only 1 instance of Corrode can exist per enemy. Yes, there is no reason to ever actually bring the Fool if you have any of the Corrode inflicting artefacts.

Mesmer Jr: She technically has Dispel + CC on her Ults but you need to be spamming Mesmer's Ult every turn for the CC to work on every enemy. You can technically run Marcus + Aid Mesmer but there are also much easier ways to Mass CC, including running An-an Lee, Satsuki or Druvis as Aid and spamming their Rank 3 Debuffs, or just using Baby Blue's Ult.

Kit Not Working Properly

Rabies: So Rabies' deal is that he inflicts Poison right? The problem is that the Poison comes from his Insight effect. And Aid characters don't get to use their Insight effect. Which means that Rabies, the Poison Guy, doesn't inflict any Poison at all if he's an Aid character. Oops. Rabies isn't completely unusable, he actually has the same 610% damage formula as Leilani and ONiON. But he has a much worse Ult (with worse damage because the Ult is balanced around the Poison that no longer works). You can just NOT use Rabies' Ult of course, but I'm putting him here so people know that you can't bring him for Poison shenanigans. Unless you're running Rabies + Aid Lilya or Lucy. But this is an "Insightful Aid" Tier List, not an "Obscure Low Rarity + High Rarity Combo" List (I'm not gonna do that btw, too many potential combos to talk about).

Note: There are actually a whole bunch of low rarities that are affected by the "No Insight" thing, Rabies is just the most notable since a lot of low rarity characters' Incantations aren't affected by the lack of Insights. This is much more of a problem with the higher rarity characters though...

= = =

Whew, that's finally done. Not sure when the high rarity version of this list will be done. That one is a lot harder to judge, mostly because I don't have ALL the high rarities to play around with, meaning I can't play some of the more obscure combos.

Cannot stress enough how many weird interactions you get when running High Rarity + High Rarity Aid. Did you know that you can use Getian's Rank 3 Channel to instantly use Thirty Seven's FUA? There's lots of weird stuff that I can't test since I can only borrow 1 character from another player at a time.

[lucyav13]

Saffron's and Dyllis' recipes

Fried shroom Plate:  You can make it with a: Shroom Shake, Volt Shroom, Long-Last Shake.

Luxurious Set Luxurious: You need to make it is with a Dyllis Dinner and a Fried Shroom Plate Heals 30 HP, cures poison and giving you the slow flower effect.

Dyllis Dinner: It's made it of a Fried Shroom Plate and a Meat Pasta Dish. Restores 30 HP and cures poison. Also gives the player 1000 points. And, you can sell it for a hundred coins.

Meat Pasta Dish: Their ingredients are: Fresh Pasta Bunch Fresh and a Power Steak. 

Odd Dinner: Ingredients: Poison Mushroom and Fried Shroom Plate. Restores 2 HP and cures poison. You can sell it for 33 coins.

Recipes you can make with a normal Shroom Shake:

Dyllis Breakfast: Ingredients: Shroom Shake and a Spicy Soup Restores 15 HP and cures poison. Also gives the player 500 points. You can sell it for 60 coins.

Emergency Ration: Ingredients: Fire Burst and a Shroom Shake. Superpowers: Normal just heals 10HP BUT, in the Pit of 100 Trials heals 50 HP, and also you can sell it for 60 coins. 

Fruity Shroom: Ingredients: Peachy Peach and a Shroom. You can sell it for 60 coins.

Honey Shroom: Ingredients: Shroom Shake and a Honey Jar Honey Jar. Recovers 10 HP and cures poison. Also gives the player 500 points. You can sell it for 58 coins.

Mushroom Crepe: Ingredients: shroom Shake and a Cake Mix. Heals 20 HP and cures poison. You can sell it for 65 coins.

Primordial Dinner: Ingredients: Primordial Fruit and a Shroom Shake. Restores 15 HP and cures poison. You can sell it for 60 coins.

Shroom Broth: Ingredients: Smelly Herb and Shroom. Restores 15 HP and cures poison. You can sell it for 55 coins.

Shroom Delicacy: Ingredients: Shroom Shake and a Dayzee Tear. Fills 10 HP and cures poison. Also gives the player 1000 points.

Shroom Pudding: Ingredients: Big Egg Big and a Shroom Shake. Heals 25 HP and cures poison. You can sell it for 65 coins.

Space Food: Ingredients: Ice Storm and a Shroom Shake Restores. Restores 50 HP in Outer Space and 10 anywhere else. You can sell it for 60 coins.

Shroom Choco-bar:  Mild Cocoa Bean and a Shroom Shake Heals 15 HP and cures poison. You can sell it for 25 coins.

Volcano Shroom: Ingredients: Hot Sauce and Shroom Shake. Doubles attack for 20 seconds. You can sell it for 60 coins.

Roast Shroom Dish: Ingredient: Super Shroom Shake. Replenishes 30 HP and cures poison. You can sell it for 96 coins.

Dyllis Special: Ingredients: Roast Shroom Dish and a Fruity Hamburger. Restores 60 HP and cures poison. Also gives the player 1500 points. You can sell it for 160 coins.

Fruity Hamburger: Ingredients: Power Steak and a Keel Mango. Restores 25 HP. You can sell it for 65 coins.

Recipes you can make with a Super shroom shake:

Honey Super: Ingredients: Super Shroom Shake and a Honey Jar. Recovers 20 HP and cures poison. Also gives the player 1500 points. You can sell it for 118 coins.

Shroom Cake. Ingredients: Super Shroom Shake and a Cake Mix Heals 30 HP and cures poison. You can sell it for 125 coins.

Other recipes:

Awesome Snack: Ingredients: Fresh Veggie and a Cake Mix. Heals 5 HP and cures poison. You can sell it for 55 coins.

Snow Bunny: Ingredients: Turtley Leaf and a Ice Storm, you can also do it with a turtley Leaf and a Snow Cone .Freezes enemies on screen. You can sell it for 5 coins.

Berry Snow Bunny: Ingredients: A snow Bunny and a Pink Apple. Freeze enemies on screen. You can sell it for 5 coins.

Couple's Cake: Ingredients: Snow Bunny and a Berry Snow Bunny Earns. the player 5000 points. You can sell it for 150 coins.

Block Meal: Ingreident: Block Block. Makes the Player invulnerable for 20 seconds. You can sell it for 53 coins.

Chocolate Cake: Ingredients: Mild Cocoa Bean and a Cake Mix. Restores 15 HP and cures poison. You can sell it for 55 coins.

Choco Pasta Dish: Ingredients: Mild Cocoa Bean and a Fresh Pasta Bunch. Restores 5 HP and cures poison. Also gives the player 500 points. You can sell it for 60 coins. (A/N: I really don't fancy it)

Dangerous Delight: Ingredient: Poison Mushroom. Infects the player with all Cursya effects. You can sell it for 3 coins.

Dayzee Syrup: Ingredient: Dayzee Tear. Doubles the player's attack for 40 seconds and gradually regenerates 13 HP. Also gives the player 1000 points. You can sell it for 35 coins.

Dyllis Deluxe: Ingredients: Shroom Steak and a Gorgeous Steak. Restores 90 HP and cures poison. Also gives the player 5000 points. You can sell it for 225 coins.

Gorgeous Steak: Ingredients: Power Steak and a Hamburger. Restores 25 HP and cures poison. You can sell it for 75 coins. 

Hamburger: Ingredient: Power Steak. Restores 20 HP and cures poison. You can sell it for 40 coins.

Shroom Steak: Ingredient: Ultra Shroom Shake. Heals 70 HP and cures poison. You can sell it for 180 coins.

Dyllis Dynamite: Ingredients: Egg Bomb and a Dyllis Breakfast. Burns all enemies on screen. You can sell it for 66 coins.

Egg Bomb: Ingredients: Big Egg and a Fire Burst. Damages all the enemies on screen. You can sell it for 50 coins.

Electro Pop: Ingredient: Thunder Rage. Electrifies the player for 40 seconds. You can sell it for 82.

Fried Egg: Ingredients: Big Egg. Restores 15 HP and cures poison. You can sell it for 30 coins.

Fruit Parfait: Ingredients: Peachy Peach and a Snow Cone. Freezes all enemies on screen. You can sell it for 70 coins.

Fruity Cake: Ingredients: Peachy Peach and a Crepe Mushroom. Restores 15 HP and cures poison. You can sell it for 90 coins.

Fruity Hamburger: Ingredients: Power Steak and a Keel Mango. Restores 25 HP and cures poison. You can sell it for 65 coins.

Fruity Punch: Ingredients: Keel Mango and a Peachy Peach. Recovers 15 HP and cures poison. You cqn sell it for 55 coins.

Fruity Shroom: Ingredients: Peachy Peach and a Shroom Shake. Restores 15 HP and cures poison. You can seel it for 60 coins.

Gingerbread House: Ingredients: Chocolate Cake and a Mousse. Refills 30 HP and cures poison. Also gives the player 3000 points. You can sell it for 130 coins.

Mousse: Ingredients: Cake Mix and a Big Egg. Restores 15 HP and cures poison. You can sell it for 60 coins.

Golden Choco-bar: Ingredients: Mild Cocoa Bean and a Golden Leaf. Fills 25 HP and cures poison. You can sell it for 50 coins.

Golden Meal: Ingredient: Gold Bar. Heals 1 HP and cures poison. You can sell it for 50 coins.

Gradual Syrup: Ingredients: Long-Last Shake and a Peachy Peach. Gradually restores 20 HP. You can sell it for 50 coins. 

Healthy Salad: Ingredient: Fresh Veggie. Restores 15 HP and cures poison. You can sell it for 28 coins.

 Heartful Cake: Ingredients:  Cake Mix and Lovely Chocolate. Gradually restores 9 HP. You can sell it for 75 coins.

Lovely Chocolate: Ingredients: Mild Cocoa Bean and Fire Burst. Doubles attack, halves damage taken, and shocks enemies touched by the player. Lasts 20 seconds. You can sell it for 45 coins.

Heavy Meal: Ingriedents:  Honey Jar and Honey Candy. Changes player's status. You can sell it for 10 coins.

 Herb Tea: Ingredent: Smelly Herb. Restores 7 HP and cures poison. You can sell it for 18 coins.

Honey Candy: Ingredient: Honey Jar — Restores 12 HP and cures poison. You can sell it for 24 coins.

Horsetail Tart: Ingredents: Horsetail and Cake Mix. Restores 12 HP and cures poison. You can sell it for 60 coins.

Hot Dog: Ingredients: Power Steak and Fresh Veggie. Restores 20 HP and cures poison. You can sell it for 60 coins.

 Ink Pasta Dish: Ingredients: Fresh Pasta and Bunch Inky Sauce. Restores 25 HP and cures poison. You can sell it for 63 coins.

Inky Soup: Ingredient: Inky Sauce. Restores 15 HP and cures poison. You can sell it for 20 coins.

Koopa Dumpling: Ingredients:  Cake Mix and a Turtley Leaf. Cuts damage taken by half for 30 seconds. You can sell it for 40 coins.

 Koopa Pilaf: Ingredients: Turtley Leaf and a Horsetail. Cuts damage taken by half for 30 seconds. You can sell it for 45 coins.

 Koopa Tea: Ingredient: Turtley Leaf. Cuts damage taken by half for 20 seconds. You can sell it for 9 coins.

Koopasta Dish: Ingredients: Fresh Pasta Bunch and a Turtley Leaf. Cuts damage taken by half for 30 seconds. You can sell it for 45 coins.

 Love Pudding : Ingredients: Lovely Chocolate and Big Egg. Reverses controls briefly and awards 1500 points. You can sell it for 75 coins.

Love Noodle Dish: Ingredients: Lovely Chocolate and Fresh Pasta Bunch. Doubles attack, halves damage taken, and shocks enemies touched by the player. Lasts 20 seconds. You can sell it for 80 coins.

Mango Juice: Ingredient: Keel Mango. Restores 10 HP and cures poison. You can sell it for 23 coins.

 Mango Pudding: Ingredients: Keel Mango and Big Egg. Restores 20 HP and cures poison. You can sell it for 55 coins.

Megaton Dinner: Ingredient: POW Block. Hits all enemies on the ground. You can sell it for 83 coins.

 Meteor Meal: Ingredient:  Shooting Star. Damages enemies on screen. You can sell it for 205 coins.

Miracle Dinner: Ingredient:  Mystery Box 8% probability. Recovers 1 HP and cures poison. Also gives the player 2000 points. You can sell it for 50 coins.

 Mistake: Any incorrect combination, or a black apple. Restores 1 HP and cures poison. You can sell it for 1 coin. 

Mistake: Ingredient: Sleepy Sheep. Puts enemies to sleep. You can sell it for 1 coin.

Mixed Shake: Peach Juice and Mango Juice. Heals 20 HP and cures poison. You can sell it for 60 coins.

Peach juice: Ingredient: Peachy Peach. Heals 12 HP and cures poison. You can sell it for 28 coins.

Omelette Plate: Ingredients: Big Egg and a Horsetail. Heals 20 HP and cures poison. You can sell it for 50 coins.

Peach Tart: Ingredients: Peachy Peach and a Cake Mix. Restores 15 HP and removes poison. You can sell it for 50 coins.

Roast Horsetail: Ingredient: Horsetail. Fills 10 HP and cures poison. You can sell it for 25 coins.

Roast Whacka Bump: Ingredient: 200 Whacka Bump. Restores 5 HP and cures poison. You can sell it for 200 coins.

Sap Muffin: Ingredients: Sap Soup and Cake Mix. Replenishes 20 HP and cures poison. You can sell it for 55 coins. 

Sap Syrup: Ingredient: Sap Soup. Halves damage taken for 40 seconds and gradually restores 13 HP. You can sell it for 20 coins.

Sky Juice: Ingredient:  Any Apple except Black Apple. Recovers 15 HP and cures poison. Also gives the player 300 points. You can sellit for 20 coins.

Spicy Dinner: Ingredients:  Big Egg and a Hot Sauce. Doubles attack for 30 seconds. You can sell it for 40 coins.

Spicy Pasta Dish: Ingredients: Hot Sauce and a Fresh Pasta Bunch Doubles attack for 30 seconds. You can sell it for 60 coins.

Spicy Soup: Ingredient: Fire Burst. Restores 8 HP and cures poison. You can sell it for 23 coins.

Spit Roast: Ingredient: Bone-In Cut. Doubles attack for 15 seconds. Also gives the player 2000 points. You can sell it for 50 coins.

Stamina Juice: Ingredients: Inky Sauce and a Honey Jar. Gradually restores 13 HP.  You can sell it for 50 coins.

Standard Chocolate: Ingredients: Mild Cocoa Bean and Poison Shroom. Changes player's status. Also gives the player 10 points. You can sell it for 4 coins.

Sweet Choco-bar: Ingredients: Mild Cocoa and Bean Honey Jar. Fills 5 HP and cures poison. You can sell it for 5 coins.

Sweet Cookie Snack: Ingredient: Cake Mix. Fills 10 HP and cures poison. You can sell it for 30 coins.

Town Special: Ingredient: Primordial Fruit. Fills 5 HP and cures poison. You can sell it for 27 coins. 

Trial Stew: Ingredients: Couple's Cake Poison and a Shroom. Lowers HP to 1. For each HP lost, player gains 100 points. You can sell it for 2 coins.

Veggie Set: Ingredients: Healthy Salad and Big Egg. Fills 20 HP and cures poison. You can sell it for 60 coins.

Warm Cocoa: Ingredient: Mild Cocoa Bean. Restores 10 HP and cures poison. You can sell it for 25 coins.

Weird Extract: Ingredients: Peach Juice and  Hot Sauce. Puts enemies to sleep. You can sell it for 55 coins.

Ok, The shopping list:

Peach 25 coins, Fresh Veggie 20 coins and Horsetail 18 coins, can be bought at the big pixelated tree, level 3-3 and can only be accessed by becoming small.

Cake mix 25 coins, Big egg 25 coins and Honej Jar 20 coins at Flipside on the other side of the canal on level B1.

At Flopside, in the same area there are: Fresh Pasta 30, Power Steak 35 and Smelly herb 15.

Chapter 5-1, Downtown of Crag, has an Itty Bits shop located just to the right of the entry point. Keel Mango 20 coins, Mild Cocoa Bean 20 coins

The last Itty Bits shop can be found in The Overthere in chapter 7-4. This shop is located on top of the building just before the Rainbow Bridge. The outside of this shop has white and yellow striped walls and a sign with stars and a Hot Dog. There you will find the Hot Sauce in 20 Coins.

In Notso's shop we find:  Super Shroom Shake 80 CoinsUltra Shroom Shake 300 CoinsThunder Rage 80 Coins.Volt Shroom 30 CoinsBlock Block 50 Coin

The Poison mushroom can only being dropped by Zombie Shrooms, Cursyas, and their relatives. 

The Dayzee tear It is dropped randomly by Crazee Dayzees and Amazy Dayzees.

The Golden bar just can find in: Chapter 3-2, in a small 3D-accessible alcove hidden east of the pipe leading to Thudley's chest, which is located two areas away.

Flipside (Map 1), use Fleep on the bush in front of Flipside Tower, 3rd Floor, right next to where Skeet found an unconscious Princess Peach.

Overthere Stair, in a chest sitting right on top of the largest structure laiden with coins in 3D on cloud 80.

The golden leaf  just can find in: Chapter 1-2 (Map 7), use Fleep above the very first mountain platform near the Paratroopas.

Given away as a reward for collecting 200 Shop Points.

Occasionally sold by Flimm.

Sold by Howzit for 100 coins each in Flipside.

The  Inky Sauces are occasionally dropped by Bloopers.

Koopa Troopas (and related Koopa types) may drop turtleys leafs  when defeated. Flimm also sells them at random.

The shooting Star can only find in: Chapter 2-1 (Map 12), use Fleep on a seven-point star in the background near the Star Block, the one with five rays converging on it.

Chapter 4-3, behind the second column of brick blocks in the first area.Chapter 5-3 (Map 34), use Fleep above the tallest protruding blue crystal in the area where the Star Block is.Chapter 7-4, at the top of the infested second structure in Sector 5, across the gap using the first structure with a red ! Switch.Chapter 8-4, in a chest at the southeast corridor near a few Goombas and red Koopa Troopas, which is also right in front of a door to the next room.

This Sap Soup can only be found by defeating Floro Sapiens.

In Howzit's shop in Flipside:Shroom Shake 30 Coins, Long-Last Shake 30 Coins.Fire Burst 20 Coins, Ice Storm 40 Coins, Sleepy Sheep 10 Coins.

But, in Yold Town the prizes are cheaper:

Fire Burst 7 Coins, POW Block 60 Coins, Shroom Shake 11 Coins, Long-Last Shake 15 Coins, Life Shroom 50 Coins, Sleepy Sheep 25 Coins, Shell Shock 8 Coins, Mighty Tonic 50 Coins, Courage Shell 25 Coins, Volt Shroom 20 Coins

And the prizes in Land of Cragnons:

Fire Burst 15 CoinsIce Storm 25 CoinsPOW Block 80 CoinsShroom Shake 25 CoinsSuper Shroom Shake 100 CoinsLife Shroom 75 CoinsSleepy Sheep 30 CoinsCourage Shell 8 CoinsMystery Box 3 CoinsPrimordial Fruit 22 Coins.

A/N: As I told you in the previous part, this will be the LAST part of Super Paper Mario Researches! I thank you all for the support you gave to this little idea that ended up being a project with many chapters. If you are reading this, I really appreciate you for following the series until its end.

Now I will dedicate myself to a new project, it will also have several parts, but in reality it will be a writing that I have also worked hard on. If you want to continue with this new story, I will publish the first parts and if I see that it receives support, I will continue publishing it through this medium.

Really thank you very much for the support and I hope you have found this research useful. Until next time!

[eldritchamy]

What the shit. Fighting a god in hand to hand combat as a gold dragon using immovable rods goes so fucking hard and it’s the backstory for a character that’s just in the main backstory???????? AMY???

You know how a lot of people, when making DND characters, make the mistake of having their level 1 PC have an elaborate backstory where they're super badass and already recognized as a hero?

When I made Ash I did the opposite. Her backstory is elaborate, yes, but in very mundane ways that inform her personality and how she perceives the world around her, and build up the logic of how she makes decisions.

I made everyone AROUND my PC a super powerful character who had done incredible things, and I gave Ash anxiety about it.

She feels, constantly, that she is inadequate by comparison. Her entire frame of reference is shaped by a bunch of women in her life that are outstandingly powerful, and she's just a quiet girl who makes leather goods and sells them for a living. She thinks of herself as the NPC in other people's more impressive lives.

Her mother, Lailah, is a nearly seven foot tall divine warrior created in Elysium to destroy Pit Fiends. She's an angel of lightning built like an MMA fighter, and she wields a weapon like piece of a lightning bolt (not stylized, I mean a real, glowing crackling arc of electricity that she holds like a staff and can be used like anything from a polearm to a spear to a whip, and when thrown it acts like a Lightning Bolt spell). She is built, both narratively and in game stats, to be an unkillable holy destroyer, capable of fighting MULTIPLE PIT FIENDS simultaneously, and winning. She's a CR 10+ magical creature (she's a homebrewed mix of Deva and Erinyes stat blocks with some unique flavor) with eighteen class levels, 16 in Zealot Barbarian and 2 in Fighter. She has a strength of 27 and a constitution of 25. She's designed to deal HUGE amounts of damage, tank unfathomable amounts in turn, NOT DROP WHEN SHE HITS ZERO HITPOINTS, and keep swinging until every devil in her way is a pile of dust, then use bonus action Second Wind to bring herself back above 0 so she doesn't incur the auto-death caveat on Zealot Barbarian's Rage Beyond Death ability. One of her attuned items is also the very simple uncommon item "Periapt of Wound Closure" which automatically stabilizes you at the start of your turn, thereby resetting the death saving throws she would theoretically have to make each time she gets hit below 0. Also, as an angel, she's innately immune to auto-death effects like Power Word Kill, which closes almost all loopholes that get around her build. She is UNSPEAKABLY badass. I ran a simulated round of combat with her once, and she could potentially one-shot a CR 15 Skittering Horror (228 HP) in a single turn. Her theoretical maximum damage output is like, 456 damage in a turn (granted this assumes all crits and rolling max damage).

So that's Ash's mom.

Aria is interesting. She was always strongly attuned to the forces of nature, and her magic grew quickly. Where Ash grew up with someone she knew would always be there to protect her from anything, Aria did NOT have that safety net, and spent her formative years learning to be more self-sufficient in terms of relying on her own power. So eventually she got sucked into an adventuring party consisting of herself (a tiefling Witch subclass with very strong druid flavor), a tiefling zealot barbarian, and a couple of elf twins who were an Arcana cleric and a Celestial Warlock. Sometime after they had made a name for themselves, they were tasked with stopping a suspected fledgling vampire who had been kidnapping girls and killing a bunch of people. When they arrived, they met Cass, who was very much NOT a new vampire. She was almost 150 years old and had been protecting women from abusers and overzealous debt collectors, and things had gotten a little messy with one or two of them, leading to a lot more attention than she normally got. They start off fighting Cass (Aria polymorphs herself into a dire wolf and lunges directly for the throat, which Cass found amusing and impressive) but realize in the banter that Cass wasn't the real problem, and she ends up being a sort of a lesson for the group in terms of whose word they trust and who they take jobs from (YES THE BACKSTORY'S BACKSTORY HAS NARRATIVE ARCS AND MORAL LESSONS THAT LEAD TO LONG TERM CHARACTER GROWTH OKAY I CAN'T HELP MYSELF). Cass, having a particular rapport with Aria, ends up joining their party as a dhampir Soulknife Rogue/Shadow Monk.

Yes, that's all backstory that I made up for an imaginary campaign that exists entirely as a set piece for Aria as one of Ash's story NPCs. This doesn't even touch on the fact that I liked Cass so much as a character that I gave HER an entire backstory of her own. I DON'T HAVE A PROBLEM.

Anyway the team only makes a bigger name for themselves for handling things that other groups can't. Eventually, they just happen to be in the Tenth District when the War of the Spark happens (major established event in the MTG canon), and I basically added some extra "scenes" to it that didn't violate existing canon so I could have that be the climax of their imaginary campaign. One of Aria's partners was a new planeswalker at the time and her spark got harvested by the Dreadhorde, specifically by the god eternal Bontu.

Gods in Magic The Gathering aren't honestly that special? They don't seem to have THAT much power, all things considered. Ravnica's gods are mostly powerful magical animals, and in the most recent Magic Story one of their gods (Anzrag the Quake Mole) was captured in an "evidence capsule" (basically Magic's version of a Pokeball). The most powerful god in MTG is probably the Ur Dragon honestly, unless you count the Eldrazi, but that's a whole other conversation since neither of those actually have the "God" creature type.

Anyway, Bontu was one of the gods of Amonket (basically a plane based on ancient Egypt), which had been conquered by an Elder Dragon planeswalker named Nichol Bolas. HE was the one who actually killed all but one of Amonket's gods, and then another planeswalker named Liliana Vess (extremely powerful necromancer) raised them as zombies for his army, because Bolas had a ton of complicated leverage over her (magical contract that he could invoke to kill her if she betrayed him). So Bontu was a god zombie.

Here's a reference:

Well, Aria was a level 18 Witch at this point since this was the climax of their campaign, so she had access to the Shapechange spell, a 9th level transmutation that lets you become any creature with a challenge rating equal or lower than your character level. And the best candidate for that was an Adult Gold Dragon (CR 17). So Aria goes full berserk and stands up on her dragon hind legs and picks a fight with a dead god that she's determined to make deader, and has a Godzilla vs King Ghidorah standoff with her.

So how do you fight a god that can suck your soul out and instantly kill you with a single touch? You don't let it touch you.

What Aria did was basically inspired by this gif of a Wildebeest trying to charge at a lion:

Or this:

And to be clear, yes, I'm saying Aria was the lion in that situation. She basically did a big dragon threat display to get Bontu's attention, and used the Gold Dragon's weakening breath to give Bontu disadvantage on Strength checks and saves. Bontu charged at her, and at the last second Aria dropped to the ground and then shot back up, clamped her teeth around the god's throat, and used her weight to throw Bontu around and knock her off balance, and her superior strength to grab her by the wrists and wrestled her to the ground so she couldn't get a grip on Aria. She had every part of the god that could have killed her pinned, and used the claws of her wings to pull Bontu's armor apart and tear at everything she could reach while thrashing her around. It was Fen, the Arcana cleric, who thought to use Immovable rods to pin Bontu down so that even if Aria lost her grip, Bontu wouldn't be able to immediately one-shot any of them. So Athena (barbarian) and Cass (rogue/monk) as the two martial classes were the ones who got close enough to handle that while Fen and her sister (Gwen) used whatever holy magic they could to help from a distance.

Now CASS had a problem, because she's a DEX based martial class, not a strength based one. She needed a boost to be able to get this job done. So she drank some of Bontu's blood from one of the wounds Aria had left on her arm to give herself a burst of strength. Except. She had to get real close to do that. And Bontu managed to get a loose grip on her, and tried to suck out her soul.

The magic that makes Cass what she is is very old and very powerful. It binds her soul to her body in a much stronger way than any living creature, fusing the two together to prevent her from dying (i.e. by having her soul separated from her body; Cass can recover from almost any conceivable physical injury as long as there's life energy, in the form of blood, for the magic that keeps her alive to feed on and maintain the seal between her body and her soul). BECAUSE SHE WAS FEEDING ON THE BLOOD OF A GOD AT THE TIME, the magic holding her together basically fought against the magic that was trying to rip her soul out, and it had enough fuel to hold on until Aria's thrashing forced Bontu to let go. So Cass survived the Elderspell thanks to a very weird and unrepeatable set of circumstances (which allows something narratively impressive and legendary to happen without being gamebreakingly overpowered and violating the established rules of the world).

Because of how her magic draws energy from other things, though, there was a side effect: she also accidentally took in one of the planeswalker sparks that Bontu had harvested. So when Cass had healed enough for her soul to no longer be dislocated, her spark activated and she became a Planeswalker. (I imagine a soul is connected to a body mostly through the nervous system, because that's how a brain holds consciousness in it, so a "dislocated" soul is like something glued to every nerve ending in your body being pulled on with an enormous amount of force, trying to sever that connection; imagine trying to pull yourself off the ground when every nerve ending in your body is superglued to the floor by something akin to the Strong Nuclear Force. It SUCKED.)

The team ended up being forced to retreat because of Cass' injuries, so Aria didn't actually manage to kill Bontu personally (or die trying, which in her grief-rage she was fully open to). Right about this time, my bottle scene ends and Magic canon comes back into play: Liliana betrays Bolas and turns the Dreadhorde against him, and Bontu ends up being the one who bites him and rips out HIS spark. Due to the enormous rush of energy of consuming all of Bolas' stolen Planeswalker sparks (tl;dr he was trying to become a god), and with the added bit of lore that it was Aria's team that heavily injured Bontu just prior to this, Bontu exploded in the process.

This resulted in Ravnica playing a game of telephone in the chaotic aftermath of the War. Aria fought a god. She's still alive and that god is dead. Rumors spread and now Aria is misremembered as the one who killed Bontu. Half the plane thinks of her as the "god killer." All she wanted was to avenge her lover or die trying.

Neither outcome happened, and now she's credited with the very thing she sees as her greatest failure. And that trauma has haunted her ever since.

[empress-of-dark2005]

Why do they call it oven when you of in the cold food of out hot eat the food?

could you give a random fact you know?

Ask the first question to @ahamkaracature.

In Pokemon a level 5 Corphish with 196 attack EVs and a beneficial Nature holding the Life Orb item with Adaptability as its Ability using Aqua Jet on a level 5 Onix with 0 HP and 0 Defense EVs holding the Eviolite item in Sun on a critical hit will have a 6.25% chance 50% damage and a 93.75% chance to deal 5% damage.

196+ Atk Life Orb Adaptability Corphish Aqua Jet vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Eviolite Onix in Sun on a critical hit: 1-10 (5 - 50%) -- 0.4% chance to 2HKO

Possible damage amounts: (1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 10)

Because of how the damage calculation formula works:

Damage = ((2xLevel/5 +2) x Power x A/D /50 +2) x weather x critical x random x STAB x type x other (there are other modifiers but I'm only including the relevant ones)

power is the base power of the move used, A and D are the attack and defense and STAB is the same type attack bonus (x1.5 if the user's type matches the move used or x2 if the user has Adaptability as its ability and its type matches the move used), type is for type matchups, and other is for items and abilities.

And with the numbers that it would be:

Damage = ((2x5/5 +2) x 40 x 18/534 /50 +2)

Damage = 2 (all decimals are rounded down)

And then it calculates all the other multipliers x0.5 from the Sun so Damage = 1 and then x1.5 the critical hit Damage = 1.5 but all decimals are rounded down so damage = 1 again so the critical hit did literally nothing.

Next it calculates the random factor basically it multiplies your damage by 0.85-1 and all the 0.85-0.99 would get rounded down to 0, 15/16 outcomes will deal 0 damage and 1 of them will deal 1 damage.

2x1 from Adaptability STAB = 2, 4x2 from the super effective = 8, and 8x1.3 from Life Orb = 10 but 15/16 all those multipliers are going into the number 0 so the possible damage amounts would be: (0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 10) and at the very end of the calculation it turns any 0s into 1s.

[thecreaturecodex]

Sphinx, Astrosphinx

"astrosphinx" © Weasyl user "xdrake", accessed at their gallery here

[Commissioned by @strawberry-crocodile. The astrosphinx is from Spelljammer, but hasn't gotten updated in the 5e Spelljammer box set. Maybe that's because they're super destructive in the original text--it refers to them living on lifeless asteroids because they immediately kill anything that fails to answer their impossible riddles. That makes them seem kind of one-note, and the commissioner asked me to make them more able to interact with other creatures. My idea was to make them malevolent game show hosts. Feel free to draw inspiration from Jigsaw, darker and edgier versions of the Riddler, and Sam Reich on Game Changer.]

Sphinx, Astrosphinx CR 10 CE Magical Beast This creature has the body of a lion, and its head is the skull of a ram. A third golden eye is open in its forehead. Its wings, mane and the tuft of its tail are covered in luxurious fur that glimmers with starlight.

An astrosphinx is a mad sphinx capable of flying between worlds. Although they do not talk about their origins, some sages suspect that astrosphinxes arise not through natural birth, but as a metamorphosis when a sphinx delves too deeply into mysteries of a cosmic nature. All astrosphinxes are, by mortal standards, completely insane. Like many other sphinxes, they enjoy riddles, but their riddles are typically nonsense—“what is the speed of blue?” and “how loud is down?” for example. Playing along may mollify an astrosphinx for a while, but it rarely finds the answers of other creatures acceptable in the long term, and responds to spoilsports with physical violence.

Astrosphinxes typically open combat with a breath weapon, a soporific gas. If all of their foes are knocked unconscious, the astrosphinx may take the time to cage their captives, or put them into diabolical traps that torture creatures to death in increments. If their prey remains active, they usually follow up with a blast of chain lightning, followed by melee attacks. Although an astrosphinx’s natural weapons are deadly enough, their dewclaws are flexible enough to act like thumbs, and some carry oversized weapons into combat as well.

An astrosphinx loves to subject other creatures to its riddles, whether they want to play or not. Most astrosphinxes have a dungeon complex rigged with traps and torture implements, sometimes staffed with lesser creatures that have agreed to serve the astrosphinx in exchange for room, board and their lives. Astrosphinxes act as deranged quiz-masters, subjecting their captives to trivia contests, word games and their obtuse riddles, increasing their torment by inches when they fail to answer correctly, and dialing up towards lethality if people refuse to play along. Some of these complexes exist in air pockets on asteroids floating through space, so even surviving an escape becomes part of the challenge (and sometimes a part of the challenge that the astrosphinx encourages).

Astrosphinx          CR 10 XP 9,600 CE Large magical beast Init +5; Senses darkvision 60 ft., Perception +11 Defense AC 24, touch 10, flat-footed 23 (-1 size, +1 Dex, +14 natural) hp 133 (14d10+56) Fort +13, Ref +9, Will +9 Immune confusion and insanity effects SR 21 Offense Speed 40 ft., fly 60 ft. (poor) Melee 2 claws +19 (2d6+6), bite +19 (2d8+6), gore +19 (2d4+6) or masterwork Large greatsword +20/+15/+10 (2d8+9/19-20), bite +17 (2d8+3), gore +17 (2d4+3) Space 10 ft.; Reach 5 ft. Special Attacks breath weapon (60 foot cone, sleep 1d6 minutes, Fort DC 21 negates, 1d4 rounds) Spell-like Abilities CL 10th, concentration +16 Constant—see invisibility 3/day—chain lightning (DC 22) Statistics Str 22, Dex 13, Con 18, Int 16, Wis 11, Cha 23 Base Atk +14; CMB +23; CMD 34 (38 vs. trip) Feats Blind Fight, Hover, Improved Initiative, Iron Will, Martial Weapon Proficiency (greatsword), Multiattack, Power Attack Skills Bluff +16, Craft (traps) +15, Disable Device +13, Fly +5, Intimidate +16, Knowledge (any one) +13, Perception +11, Sense Motive +8; Racial Modifiers +4 Craft (traps), +4 Disable Device Languages Aklo, Common, Sphinx SQ madness, no breath, starflight Ecology Environment any land or underground Organization solitary Treasure standard (Large masterwork greatsword, other treasure) Special Abilities Madness (Ex) An astrosphinx uses their Charisma modifier on Will saves instead of their Wisdom modifier, and are immune to insanity and confusion effects. Only a miracle or wish can remove an astrosphinx’s madness. If this occurs, the astrosphinx gains 6 points of Wisdom and loses 6 points of Charisma. Starflight (Su) An astrosphinx can survive in the void of outer space. It flies through space at an incredible speed. Although exact travel times vary, a trip within a single solar system should take 3d20 hours, while a trip beyond should take 3d20 days (or more, at the GM's discretion)—provided the astrosphinx knows the way to its destination.

[all-things-skylanders]

Bill Cipher as a Skylander!

Bill's element was surprisingly difficult to choose. Magic seems the most obvious, but Dark fits his moral compass (or lack of one), but one option stands above the rest: Kaos. The issue there is that Kaos element isn't available for any character other than Kaos himself. So, for the time being, I think i'll have Bill be Dark element.

Bill would be a Mage class Sensei, wielding his cane as a staff. He uses his godlike powers of reality warping and sadistic mind to reduce his foes into atoms with long lasting effects of rapid piercing damage for large amounts of crowd control.

Read below to find out more!

Stats:

Health: 400 (Level 1) 1200 (Level 20)

Power: 70

Speed: 55

Armor: 50

Critical Hit: 36

Elemental Power: 25

Core Abilities:

Primary - Magic Ray: Bill fires a low damage laser from his cane that pierces through enemies and bounces off of walls. The laser can pierce/bounce 3 times.

Secondary - Warp: Bill creates a bubble of chaos that can do one of three random effects to an enemy that passes through it. (1: rapid bursts of low damage that racks up quickly. 2: deals small damage while heavily slowing down what's caught within. 3: deals small damage while doubling all damage the enemy takes.)

Upgrades (ordered by cost to purchase):

500 - Tertiary: Cosmic Fold: Bill creates a distortion in reality around himself, forming a sphere that poisons every enemy within to make them take damage overtime that will ramp up overtime.

700 - Tele-Bomb: When using the Warp, you can hold the Tertiary button to have Bill perform a Tele-Bomb instead, teleporting backwards a good distance while leaving a bubble of chaos that will explode when an enemy steps inside of it.

900 - Super Laser: Bill's Magic Ray can pierce/bounce six times now.

1200 - Maniacal Maniac: Bill gains double the power boost from elemental zones that boost him.

Upgrade Paths:

Path 1 - King of Chaos: Bill Cipher rules over the Nightmare Realm for a reason. Select this path to unleash his cruelest powers upon the world!

1700 - Endless Beam: Hold the Primary button down to have Bill's Magic Ray become the Endless Beam. The Endless Beam can pierce infinitely, stopping after hitting a wall, and it will deal very rapid bursts of light damage to everything it touches.

2200 - Cosmic Toxins: The poison damage from the Cosmic Fold is increased by 50%, and Bill will now heal 10 HP for every enemy within the Fold when he uses it (Max: 100 HP).

3000 - Dark Bill: While inside of a zone that boosts Bill's power, he will turn into his Red Monster form from Wierdmaggedon (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_eiCGIO_z4), though he'd only get slightly larger.

Path 2 - Manipulator: Bill is a silver tongued master of deception. Choose this path, and his trickery will be yours to use and abuse!

1700 - Possession: Hold the Primary button down to have Bill enter a possession state. The first enemy to attack him in this state will become Possessed, where Bill will take control of their body, becoming a statue and letting the player control the enemy, using the Primary button to use the enemy's attack. If Bill's statue takes damage, the possession ends immediately.

2200 - Soul Control: After possessing an enemy, for the next 10 seconds, Bill will take half damage from anything that hits him, and the enemy he had possessed will take the other half.

3000 - Statue of Broken Dreams: While in his statue form, Bill will produce small waves of magic that deal knockback, making it harder to hit him while possessing an enemy.

Soul Gem:

4000 - Eternal Chaos: Bill will now heal 10 HP every 10 seconds.

Sky-Chi Power:

Break in Reality: Charge the Cosmic Fold to have it become the Break in Reality. An 'X' shaped hole will split in the sky above, firing out a massive burst of high damage piercing energy that poisons anything hit by it. Afterwards, two Eyebats with 150 HP will float on either side of Bill, stunning enemies they catch in their sight for a short while. The eyebats leave after 30 seconds.

Other Stuff:

Upon being placed on the portal for the first time, Bill will give the player his 'Cipher Staff', being a Legendary Mage weapon that gives +50 Power and +10 Speed.

[samueldays]

Retrospective: D&D 3e class feature advancement and design

Of the editions of D&D that I've played, I think Third Edition is my favorite. It's imbalanced, sure, but part of what differentiates D&D from videogames is that there's a DM on hand to say "let's change that". Much of the general success of 3rd was probably due to the Open Gaming License that you may recall a recent fuss about, and two specific impacts of the OGL were 1) explosion of fan content to add on and change stuff, 2) fanmade polish of the System Reference Document (SRD), such as this hyperlinked and crosslinked version where just about everything is accessible in one click. Much less searching for rules!

I also personally liked it for the unusual way it tried hard to put player characters and monsters in the same mechanical framework using the same scale, unlike far too many games, video or tabletop, where the PC has 138 HP but does 9999 damage. (This was to some extent present in earlier editions, but 2e's Monstrous Manual fails to give a creature's Strength score, only specifying its damage directly.) D&D in general was unusually fair and honest about letting you loot Lord Mega-Evil's Mega-Sword instead of doing "2% drop chance" shenanigans. 3e went a step further to making the bugbear playable out of the box, if you wanted to play a bugbear. Bugbears were now real creatures in a sense, not simply bags of HP you popped for XP.

If you're waiting for me to get to the subject announced in the title, just keep waiting, this is a twenty year old game and I'm a grognard with a pet topic. ;-)

4th edition decided to strip much of this stuff back out again, and I detested it. 4e was super weird. 5e tentatively tried to be the simplified best bits of 1e and 3e (IMO) which is nice for the newbies, but I feel its class system still leaves much to be desired. The whole notion of "classes" in a RPG is a bit of a necessary evil. It doesn't exist in-universe, it's an abstraction because doing full pointbuy is more tiresome for players and far easier to accidentally break the system by neglecting one stat or pushing another too high. At the same time, you don't want to lock characters into a progression at level 1, so designers tend to re-invent various class options and class choices that veer back towards pointbuy, and multiclassing...

Bluntly: The "favored class" rules and multiclassing xp penalties in 3rd were failures. The hypothesis was that it would discourage "5 levels of this, 1 of this, remaining levels of this" cherry-picking and encourage keeping 2-3 classes balanced, with an exception for the favored class. What it actually encouraged was "5 levels of this, 1 level of this prestige class, remaining levels of this prestige class" because prestige classes (PrCs) were exempt. Removing that exemption would have had worse second-order effects because prestige classes had different numbers of levels and conditional advancement permission! A deeper overhaul was needed, but didn't appear. My groups usually ended up ignoring multiclassing xp penalties. Worthless rule, no content, no value. Especially the bit where it's possible to get stuck at -100% XP if you made deliberately bad choices, that's nonsense.

What was also a failure, but less so, and produced the content I want to ramble about today, is how the class system incentivized multiclassing in very different ways for different classes. I'm going to gloss over questions of obscure splatbook availability and optimization level here; if you know enough to have an opinion on them you probably don't need to be reading this.

-

Fighter: Multiclass out or prestige class ASAP. This because Fighters have no class features that scale specifically with Fighter level - feats, BAB and HP can be gotten anywhere, and stack cleanly from different classes. Fighter 4 / Barb 1 / PrestigeClassA 5 / PrestigeClassB 10 is an example outcome of starting from "Fighter" and keeping the concept without being bound to the classname.

Sorcerer: Prestige out, but only to +1 caster level classes. Sorcerers have 1 scaling class feature, "spellcasting", which is advanced as a whole by several prestige classes. Something like Sorc10 / Loremaster 10 is cool, gets you 20th level casting, and more class features.

Druid: Stay pure. Druids have multiple scaling class features, and very few prestige classes advance other than spellcasting.

(I reiterate: this is what the class system incentivized. Not what you 'should' play.)

-

This difference was not a matter of party role, but of class feature wording.

Broadly speaking, there's two kinds of class features in 3rd Edition: those that provide a static ability at a fixed level (for example, Paladins become immune to fear at 3rd level) and those that have a progression scaling with each level (for example, Paladins can Smite Evil to add their level to the damage done).

Fighters got almost entirely static abilities, and those with diminishing returns. Spellcasting was almost entirely scaling.

Paladins were closer to the Druid end of the scale due to Smite Evil and Lay on Hands saying "paladin level" (not caster level, nor character level) when calculating what to scale with. A few prestige classes explicitly advanced these features, but there was no standard framework for advancing them the way the Thaumaturgist prestige class had "+1 level of existing spellcasting class" for any of druids, clerics, wizards or sorcerers.

Theoretically, the Thaumaturgist or Mystic Theurge prestige classes also worked for other spellcasting classes such as Paladin, but this was mostly worthless because paladins were tertiary casters who got slower per-level spellcasting progression. +1 level of spellcasting had lower value for paladins or bards than it did for clerics or wizards. This was aggravated by partial progression classes such as Eldritch Knight, which provided less spellcasting advancement - measured in terms of fewer levels. They got community shorthand like 9/10 or 7/10 casting progression.

An intuitive-seeming fix haunted me for years: PrCs that give partial advancement to full casters should give full advancement to partial casters. Perhaps even more than one-for-one when advancing tertiary casters. But it was hard to spell out in rules.

Instead, WotC printed special case ugly hack PrCs like the Sublime Chord, which was blatantly "The Bard Prestige Class For Bards" that gave faster-than-bard spellcasting progression up to 9th level bard spells. (In the core game, wizards get up to 9th level spells, but bards stop at 6th level.) It worked by specifying in detail a new separate spellcasting progression meant to be used at each level from 11 to 20, after using the regular bard progression from level 1 to 10.

Ironically, this special case could then fit back into the standard framework: take 10 Bard levels, take 1 Sublime Chord prestige level, now Sublime Chord has its own spellcasting progression so it can be advanced by other prestige classes such as Loremaster or Thaumaturgist. Sublime Chord was a prestige class that bards took mostly for the spellcasting, and then they didn't need to stay in that class for the spellcasting, because spellcasting was a standard class feature that could be advanced in other ways.

What a mess.

-

Still, I gotta give Wizards credit for being willing to fuck around and try new stuff to get out of this mess they'd made.

During 3rd edition, some of their later pile-ons to this mess were the Truenaming magic system that worked based on a skill check instead of levels (this was swiftly exploited because Make Single Number Go Up is easy for nerds with a wide variety of options), the Shadowcasting magic system that got to retroactively convert the class levels of a wizard who multiclassed into shadowcaster (I never saw this used in practice), and the Initiating not-a-magic system in the Tome of Battle:

Instead of caster levels you had initiator levels, and instead of casting a spell you initiate a martial maneuver, and the maneuver involved swinging your sword around so expertly that it shot fireballs or healed your friends or added an extra 8d8 damage or froze the enemy's lifeblood with the Five-Shadow Creeping Ice Enervation Strike. It also let you resist poison or block mind control by concentrating really hard on how you are a mall ninja One with the Blade.

(image: a Blade Magic user who has convinced the DM that hitting people with your bare hands counts as a 'blade' if you call it Knife-Hand Strike.)

It was actually pretty good, once you got past the flowery names, the weeaboo aesthetic shift, the increased complexity, the dissociated mechanics, and the fact that Wizards printed three initiator subsystem classes that were different enough to be annoying. Now that I'm done damning it with faint praise: you calculate multiclass initiator level by taking your main initiator class's class level and adding half the levels in other classes, whether or not they are initiator classes. A Swordsage 6/Fighter 6 character counts as Swordsage 9 for purposes of the Swordsage's primary class feature: initiator level and martial maneuvers.

This sort of worked to encourage a moderate amount of multiclassing on occasion by reducing the cost, but not really, because of nonlinear scaling. The low-level Swordsage abilities are on the order of "Fighter but with 1d6+1 fire damage". The high-level Swordsage abilities are like "Enemy has to make a Fortitude save or die. On a successful save, enemy still takes 20d6 extra damage on top of your regular damage" and "Quasi-timestop: you get 10 opportunities in a row to pick up a nearby enemy and throw him. Your choice whether you want to throw 10 guys off a cliff, or bounce 1 guy against the wall until he dies."

This class feature progression was cribbed from the core spellcasting system for Sorcerers and Druids, see above for the multiclass incentives on those.

-

I don't have a general solution. Here is my sketch of a fix to the spellcasting part, also usable with the cribbed-from-spellcasting class features like initiator progression:

Build a spellcasting progression separately from a class. Each progression goes up to 9th level spells at character level 20, or the system equivalent. The "Wizard" class then gets a class feature which says something like "+1 spellcasting progression at each level". The "Bard" class gets a class feature which says something like "+0.75 spellcasting progression at each level". The Paladin class get a class feature which says something like "+0.4 spellcasting progression at each level". Round up or down with minima to taste.

This replicates the effect of the 3e progression where the Wizard got up to 9th level spells, the Bard got 6th and the Paladin stopped at merely 4th.

But by separating the spellcasting progression, all these base classes get the same amount of benefit from a Prestige Class which provides +X spellcasting progression per level (X probably 0.5-1). In regular 3e, spellcasting progression classes were worth far more to the wizard than to the paladin, because the paladin got 1/20th of a step towards 4th level spells and the wizard got 1/20th of a step towards 9th level spells.

This eliminates the weird special case that is the Sublime Chord, also eliminates certain other kinds of dumb cheese around Ur-Priest, creates space for semi-focused casting prestige classes that provide 0.9 spellcasting that's an improvement for bards but a slowdown for wizards, and makes it easier for Fighter-adjacent and Rogue-adjacent classes and prestige classes like Assassin to dabble in a little bit of spellcasting at a controlled rate. In weird design space, it allows backloading on a class that goes from +0.5 to +1.5 over the course of several levels to "catch up".

A downside is that this "fractional casting" is more granular, more bookkeeping, and closer to pointbuy, but it's a small step and D&D 3.5 was already including the similar Fractional BAB/Saves in optional rules. Maybe someone can be inspired by this to make something easier.

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Now I would like to say that D&D Third Edition has come and gone and will probably never be repeated, having been supplanted by two later editions twenty years on, especially 3.5e with all its baroque customization, but that would be a lie because not only did it spawn a great many clones, Pathfinder is out there being a big name 3.5e clone with just enough tweaks to not be a copyright infringement. (Also: just enough tweaks to not quite be backwards compatible.) So I feel I should try to give helpful advice for design of class-based RPG systems, rather than just this historical overview so far. Here's my big suggestion:

Figure out how a class offers value, and why I should keep taking it.

The D&D 3e Fighter fails this test. You should multiclass out. Full BAB, d10 HD, crappy skills, Fortitude save (more chassis than feature) are available elsewhere. Feats (the only real feature) have diminishing returns.

The Pathfinder Fighter still fails this test - it's been given tiny value buffs like the scaling effect of Weapon Training: for every 4 levels get +1 to damage with a weapon group. Meanwhile the wizards are still off getting caster levels that give +1d6 spell damage every single level, and it's easy to get 1 damage every 4 levels from other sources.

Also, the Pathfinder Fighter has been given a Bravery feature: +1 on saves against fear for every 4 levels. Meanwhile the Paladin is still getting outright fear immunity at level 3.

The converse of this suggestion is asking yourself in design: Which of a class's valuable features can I get elsewhere?

For the Fighter it's "all of them", for the Sorcerer it's "all of them, but fewer places" and for the Druid it's complicated but "one-third" is a first approximation.

Extra corollary: "...and if getting those features elsewhere, what am I giving up or getting on the side?"