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utilitycaster · 2 years

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OGL misconceptions

Since I am still seeing a lot of misinformation out there, I figured I'd do a fact check post. Note that I do not personally have a copy of the leaked draft; some resources are given at the end of the post. See also the 2000 OGL v1.0a here. This is noncomprehensive, is only touching on some of the things I've seen most commonly in the tags [sidebar: the only tag I check regularly is the Critical Role tag, and much of what I've seen on Tumblr is coming from people spamming that tag for general D&D content that only tangentially mentions CR, so...stop doing that.] Finally, this is based on what is a draft, and there are quite possibly going to be updates to the final document. I would also assume that the January 13th effective date will be changed based on the release date of the finalized OGL.

Free fan content is not affected. That is covered by the Fan Content Policy. Your personal homebrew or the weird-ass build you saw on Reddit or the item you saw in a post last week are all fine.

Actual play shows should be largely unaffected, and only merchandise containing WoTC IP would be. (NOTE: original posting of this post had a typo of "affected" for "unaffected"; check your reblogs) Shows like Critical Role, NADDPod, and D20 all use homebrew settings, so that's also unaffected (as is any Exandrian content that was published in the Explorer's Guide and Call of the Netherdeep; that is CR's IP that WoTC has license to use). A show might be affected if they've set the game in a WoTC licensed setting or with a WoTC module (eg: Eberron, Ravenloft), but most of the shows that do that are put out by WoTC anyway. Critical Role and TAZ have, notably, already avoided using copyrighted terms for deities, races, etc. in published non-WoTC works (this is why Melora is exclusively the Wildmother in the Tal'Dorei guides, because "Melora" is WoTC IP, but the idea of a nature goddess is obviously not; this is also why Cree in the Nine Eyes is referred to as catfolk and not a tabaxi, or why Phandalin's name in the TAZ graphic novels is changed to Haverdale). The only reason why a show might need to switch game systems would be if they use a system that is not D&D but is based on D&D's SRD and which will be subject to the OGL changes. Most Pathfinder shows I'm aware of use the Pathfinder SRD (ie, free), and SW5e as used in Starstruck Odyssey is also free. This also only affects the future of those shows.

VTTs (Virtual Tabletop Tools) may be affected, but most of their core features aren't. Battle maps and virtual dice rollers are not WoTC IP. Incorporating the mechanics of D&D into the VTT is, but that would mean actively having a character sheet or monster statblock available within the VTT. You could still just have a dice roller that prompts you for a modifier (which is how I always personally used Foundry). D&D Beyond will not be affected, since it is owned by WoTC. Additionally, many VTTs already have existing agreements specifically with WoTC that will take precedence over the OGL, which is a catch-all for companies that do not have specific licensing agreements. See the WoTC/D&D Beyond blog post here.

Only creators making over $750,000 specifically on material licensed under the OGL will be subject to royalties, and only on income in excess of $750,000. This means that if you put something up on DMs Guild and make $500, you are fine and owe nothing. If you make $749,999, you owe nothing. If you make $750,100, you owe the 25% royalty only on the $100 you are making above $750,000. WoTC predicts under two dozen companies will actually be affected by this at this time; they are all fairly big names within the D&D content arena such as Paizo, Darrington Press (CR's imprint), Hit Point Press, Green Ronin, Kobold Press, etc. Royalties also are said to begin in 2024, so companies have a year to decide what to do.

Now for the editorializing part:

Paizo is specifically in the crosshairs and anyone telling you to switch to it is either misinformed at best, or does not have your best interests at heart. Paizo is the main target here. The others are publishing material that serve as supplements to the core WoTC products, but do not replace them. For example: if you have either of the Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting books, you will note that they do not have stats for the races mentioned, nor the core class information. If you want to play a Cobalt Soul Monk, you still need the PHB in addition to the Tal'Dorei setting books. On some level, this is almost certainly due to Paizo being like "look! we're like D&D but we're not! switch to us!" And, understandably, WoTC is saying "hey, you took our SRD game engine and are now our largest competitor", which is also almost certainly why this is overriding the OGL 1.0a under which Pathfinder was originally created. I am not saying not to switch to a different TTRPG if you want to! You should always feel free to switch to a different TTRPG if D&D is not meeting your needs! I am saying that Pathfinder is probably your absolute worst bet in terms of things likely to be affected by the OGL, and anyone telling you to switch to it is telling you to jump from an ocean liner into a slightly smaller ship heading straight for a waterfall solely because the ocean liner stopped serving bottomless brunch.

People throwing this to actual play shows do not know what they are talking about and are just trying to start shit. Self-explanatory; why should Dimension 20 or whatever put out a statement on an unofficial leaked draft that minimally affects them.

Bad faith is common and everpresent. As discussed extensively on this blog in scattered bitchy shitposts, there are a lot of people who hate D&D/WoTC, or Critical Role, or other popular actual play shows. Sometimes their reasons are valid and sometimes their reasons are stupid. It doesn't really matter though; what matters is that their minds are made up and they will be telling you to switch game systems/stop listening or watching pretty much regardless of what the companies do. If you want to switch or stop listening, that's fine! But, as mentioned, I remember a few months ago someone arguing that you should switch from D&D because they were obviously going to start licensing NFTs for profitability reasons, and now the OGL specifically prohibits that. There's a lot being pulled out of thin air to make spurious arguments. In general, it is helpful to ask yourself "is this person recommending a game because they genuinely believe it will improve my life and better fit my individual tastes and needs? Or are they just being a dick about D&D or this specific actual play show and don't give a shit about my happiness, just as long as I'm not playing the game/watching the show that they, an internet stranger with bad vibes to boot, do not personally like."

YouTubers are trying to get views, and that is usually their primary goal. Also self-explanatory. If you're trusting the same people who decided that Silvery Barbs would ruin D&D which had also already been ruined by the chronomancy class, the fact that some sorcerers get more spells than other sorcerers, the fact that healing word exists... to tell you that this has ruined D&D? I don't think I can help you.

Several of the things people are freaking out about are either standard boilerplate now, or were in the original OGL. OGL 1.0a reserves the right to terminate the license with 30 days notice as well (item 13); stating that material you make via an open license can be used freely by the owner of that IP is fairly standard legal practice.

Sources:

OGL v1.0a

WOTC Fan Content Policy

Gizmodo/io9 coverage

D&D Beyond/OneD&D blog post

Screenrant coverage

#d&d #this is rebloggable but I will be blocking clownery as always.#long post

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lucrezianoin · 11 months

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Canon in videogames (ascended astarion rant adjacent)

So I noticed that a lot of the comments disagreeing with me seeing Ascended Astarion/Tav as a toxic relationship tends to focus on a particular way to see canon.

In media that is fixed (no viewer input more than reading/watching/interpreting) canon is pretty easy to define, and of course there will be interpretation above it (and headcanons too). And I thought canon was pretty easy to define in videogames, but clearly not? Or maybe it is and I am being fooled??

So I am writing this post so that every time someone comes at me with the same argument over and over again, I can just redirect them here.

So the argument seems to be this: "Ascended Astarion is not toxic because I never broke up with him, so my character and me did not see him acting toxic", or "Well, I did not play as Karlach, so Astarion did not react badly to my character at all" (the Karlach scene is this one). More on Ascended Astarion and my opinions on how he sees love and relationship here.

The thing is, I do not think this makes much sense for what we consider canon. The answer I usually get is "This is an rpg where you create your story". Yeah... within the confines of a set world.

I imagine videogame canon like this:

(SORRY for the shitty graph)

Everything on the bottom is given by the writers. That is the canon world. By the nature of the videogame that world can also change, but it is not as infinite as the player's imagination. The player is the one that in classic rpgs has infinite amounts of possible stories and backgrounds that can be expressed with a finite amount of choices.

These choices enact upon the world (ex. in Fable I can kill everyone in the village and the people will call the guards on me), on objects (ex. drinking from the Well in Dragon Age Inquisition) and on characters (ex. helping Vivienne's quest).

These are big choices, but there are also small ones of simple interactions. I imagine it like a bouncing ball. As the player I throw things at the world/objects/characters and they will respon in a certain way based on how they are written.

For example, I can ask Astarion: "Hey, what colors were your eyes before you turned into a vampire?" and he as a CHARACTER who is written by writers will reply in a certain way. In what way? Usually in a way that is directly correlated to his characterization. So, he is going to answer "I don't remember." This dialogue was chosen and written by people (real human beings) with the intent of telling a story.

Now, in rpgs like Baldur's Gate 3 (but I think it is more visible in rpgs like Pathfinder and Dragon Age), world and characters change with choices. So what you get bouncing back at you is not the same static character.

Ex. let's take Dragon Age, let's take Isabela from Dragon Age 2. As the player you will meet Isabela and she will be written as "character Isabela". All your interaction with her are: Player -> Dialogue; Isabela -> Answers with Isabela-specific dialogue. These dialogues characterize who Isabela is, her role in the story, her backstory etc.

Through the game, Isabela will take two possible paths thanks to the interactions with the player, so the Isabela-path1 will have specific answers that will be associated to her character development, same for Isabela-path2.

So the player can influence the direction of the character but the player does not substitute the character with their own headcanon... the writers wrote that path, that direction, and now the new Isabela's answers will help the player see the consequences of their choices.

For objects and less interactive npcs it is similar:

You have the world. There is a cat in the world. You meet the cat and the player knows the cat is there.

Now, the point is this:

What happens to the cat if the player does not explore that part of the world/city? Is the cat still part of the canon?

The answer (in my opinion) is yes. Because we know 100% that videogame are written as finite creations (at least rpg), save from patches. So we know 100% as a fact that in the story of the videogame Baldur's Gate, Myshka the cat is there even if the player does not find them or visit them. That is why using playthrough and guides if something we can do.

The same happens with characters.

If I ask Astarion "What is the worst thing that ever happened to you" in act 3, he will reply "Being buried alive".

If I don't ask Astarion the question... does this mean that we are playing a game where he could reply ANYTHING else? Does this mean that he was never buried alive just because as the player I did not explore those options?

Of course not.

Astarion is a fixed character (like Isabela) who can change path into another FIXED character.

So imagine Astarion like a bottle. He has all these things: lore, characterization, a path, how he reacts - these are all written IN HIM, because he is a fictional character created by writers and not by the player. As the player you can poke and throw him in a blender, and ask and insist, and you will get answers from him. Answers based on his characterization.

What happens if you do not ask the questions?

What happens is that the characterization is still there, but as the player you did not get to see it. For example, many players do not know that Astarion was buried alive by Cazador, but the fact is still canon and still part of his backstory.

When you choose to ascend him, you are influencing a path - but you cannot control the consequences. You push him in a direction but the direction, the characterization, is fixed and written by the creators of the game (and Astarion).

So it does not matter that the player will never choose the option to break up with Ascended Astarion after the ending - very rarely people choose those option, if not to try out of curiosity, as this is the very end of the game - it does not matter because what matters is what the answers tell us of his character. Which is that he now completly controls Tav and takes away their agency.

So someone can play the whole Ascended Astarion as the perfect romance, and imagine that their created character thinks of it as the perfect romance. But as the player, you are aware that you are choosing dialogues, you are aware of the fact that if you choose the wrong dialogue you will uncover more of Ascended Astarion's characterization.

"I would never break up with Astarion in my game so he is not toxic in there" makes no sense, because the point is that "The writers wrote Ascended Astarion as this kind of character, by not breaking up I am roleplaying NOT UNCOVERING this toxicity." The toxicity/abusiveness still exists, it is simply hidden for roleplay reason... but you, as the player, should know how videogames work.

#ascended astarion #astarion #sort of #meta #bg3 #bg3 spoilers

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cavegirlpoems · 8 days

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So we all hate DnD, but I am kinda curious what are the actually bad ttrpgs?

I know that 3,5e and pf got bloated even more than 5e did, FATAL is a meme, but what else?

I think Chronicles of Darkness tell you the system's gonna be a sleek, streamlined narrative system and then immediately bukakke's pointless fiddly complexity all over everything, to an extent that I never see most STs actually use half the subsystems (does anybody actually like the Doors mechanic?) but also you can utterly break the game if you combine the right merits and powers in a way that I really hope isn't intentional. WoD games all have slightly clunky, lame mechanics but at least in OWoD the mechanics take an extremely simulationist approach of simply modeling the fiction, balance be damned; CoD throws out the simulationism in favour of abstraction and narrativism, but perversely only makes the mechanics more complex, and deploys more weird dice tricks so eyeballing probabilities gets much harder. Everything is fiddly, everything has specific exceptions, and everything good is gated behind weird prerequisites and builds as if the devs thought they were making pathfinder. If you're some sort of weirdo who actually prefers the CoD settings, run them using OWoD mechanics for the love of god.

Shadowrun 6e's character generation is so complex that people have created third party apps that are basically mandatory in order to wrangle it into shape. It's notoriously complex in play with basically every action requiring multiple steps of calculation, to the extent that 'you need to do calculus if you set off a grenade next to a wall' is a meme; when I played we simply never used grenades because we were all to scared of trying to make sense of the mechanics. However, in play a slightly minmaxed mage can make every other party member obsolete by simply summoning an extremely powerful spirit to solve every task. I hated every minute of it.

Pokemon Tabletop Adventures uses d20-based mechanics for trainers, where you roll a d20 vs armour class to hit, and then roll some damage. It also recreates the mechanics of the pokemon video games largely verbatim. Its expected that trainers and pokemon can and will interact despite using totally different systems, and trainers can even learn pokemon moves. Some classes are good at things like 'capturing and training pokemons' while others are good at 'fighting pokemons themselves with martial arts' or 'winning contests' or 'being a film noir detective', but you only get XP or mechanical support for the first ones. Some classes get abilities like 'perfect mind-control, no save' while others get abilities like 'you're better at growing berries'. You are expected to calculate the stats of every pokemon individually, from scratch, for every encounter. Encounters typically feature 5-10 wild pokemons often of multiple species and levels, alongside 3-5 player characters and up to six pokemons per PC. Its a fractal spreadsheet nightmare. Unlike shadowrun, the app to make this insanity playable doesn't exist. Good god. Send help.

On the other end of the spectrum from stupid fiddly crunch, Ten Candles is responsible for the single most miserable ttrpg experience of my life. It claims to be a narrative game which gives players the ability to define the fiction as they go, but fails at this because the GM has secret knowledge that other players aren't privy to, meaning that it invites players to be creatively vulnerable when they have narrative authority, with a chance that they might get their contributions unilaterally overruled due to information they had no way of knowing. Since the game ends with everybody dying automatically, the game inherently leans on the GM to railroad in what's meant to be a colaberative narrative experience. And finally, on a purely practical level, the clever conciet of playing by candlelight and extinguishing candles as the game progresses means that by half-way in you can't read your fucking character sheets or dice, which is less spooky and more irritating. God I hate ten candles.

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anim-ttrpgs · 5 months

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Hey just wanted to say that the work you do is really inspiring. I think the TTRPG community has needed an urban fantasy noir sort of thing for a little while and I really like the direction you're taking it in. Looking forward to stuff in the future!!

Thank you! Basically all our projects come from a place of need, each one being something that we wanted to play ourselves, but either it just didn’t exist, or the people who did do it didn’t do it to our satisfaction.

Since it’s our blog we can toot our own horn a bit, and yeah, the TTRPG community did need Eureka. The whole idea originally came out of our dissatisfaction with investigation and mystery-solving gameplay in most of the other more well-known TTRPGs that attempt to tackle this genre, such as Call of Cthulhu, Delta Green, and Gumshoe. They either make it too easy for bad dice rolls to get the party hopelessly stuck by relying too heavily of the PC’s skills, or make things difficult on the player by not giving the PC’s skills quite enough input, which can make efficient mystery solving very difficult across sessions with a whole week or more of real time in between them. (And it’s barely even worth mentioning that the most popular TTRPGs such as D&D5e and Pathfinder just plain cannot do investigative gameplay to any respectable degree at all.)

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy’s Investigation Point and Eureka! Point system, whereby each skill check to investigate something fills a bar on the character sheet until the investigator gets a “Eureka!”, which can be spent to retroactively gain information from an investigation skill check that they previously failed, as well as many other specific rules that are too nuanced to go into here but that you can read about in the free version of the rulebook, are part of our answer to that. As you are putting the pieces together in your own mind, so is your character, and this system acts as a failsafe, but not a crutch, to prevent a single bad dice roll from leaving the party totally twisting in the wind.

And I personally have always been really autistic about folklore, which is where Eureka’s unique approach to playable monsters comes in. No RPG had ever really done certain monsters to my satisfaction, particularly vampires. Folkloric vampires have a great deal of quirks and weaknesses that usually get cut from any sort of vampire media because they’re too “silly,” but I disagree. I want them all, and so when a monster is playable in Eureka, it’s its own unique experience, unlike playing anything else in any other game or even within Eureka. (I am very, very proud to say that a number of V:TM veterans have said that Eureka does vampires much better than V:TM itself.)

Not every playable monster in Eureka is 100% strictly folkloric, which was a bit of a struggle for me, but ultimately the small exceptions that were made make the RPG better, so I can’t complain, especially because we managed to weave some pretty cool themes into all of them, which I will touch on more when I finally get finished writing that big huge post about, well, Eureka’s themes.

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is kickstarting from right now until May 10th! Back it while you still can!

youtube

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.

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zarvasace · 1 year

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Four and Shadow, but in Pathfinder!! :D (last one!) I also redid this art and it looks so much better. Four is so colorful and so much fun to draw. ...even if I did accidentally switch up the red and purple panels on his tunic.

Pathfinder Chain Masterpost

All details and notes under the cut!

Honestly, I almost made Four a summoner with Shadow as his eidolon, but it doesn't fit as well. That would be hilarious, though. They're set up as separate PCs.

FOUR

Ancestry: Halfling! He be short and appreciative of nice things. And the Minish give off halfling vibes, don't they?

Heritage: Suli. Sulis are element-touched, but with all four elements rather than just one. It's a bit less obvious visually than the other one-element-touched heritages, but they have some element powers. Their eyes can also change color according to the element they're attuned to (which is so fanon of Four) and often they have metallic skin. So his here is extra-shiny!

Background: Artisan, specializing in metalcraft. He probably has some feats like Quick Repair.

Class: this one was a bit harder to figure out, but I'm going with an Outwit Ranger. They're rangers, so martially inclined with both melee and ranged, and they have the ability to track prey and deal some extra damage under the right conditions. Outwit rangers specifically focus on being smart to figure out weaknesses and set traps. They're very smart and use that rather than brute force. If I decided to build each of the colors separately, I could make them all different flavors of ranger.

Archetype: perhaps alchemist, like Wild, so he can make things. That's a bit strange, though, so maybe he'd better benefit from a teamwork-type archetype like Marshal or Bastion?

SHADOW

Ancestry: also halfling! Shadow is also small.

Heritage: Reflection. This heritage's whole thing is about being a direct copy of someone else and how angsty they might be about it. There are also some cool feats related to mirrors and traveling through them or storing stuff in them!

Background: Discarded Duplicate. This background mentions that the duplicate was used to stand in for the original before being "decommissioned," which isn't quite right, but there aren't any unusual abilities to the background, so I'd waive that particular little flavor in favor of an excellently named background. Four didn't discard him. Vaati did.

Class: Sorcerer! There are a lot of caster types I could have chosen, so I feel a bit bad about using sorcerer twice (the other one is Hyrule), but a charisma caster that isn't a psychic just works so well for Shadow. I'd give him the Aberrant bloodline so he has access to the occult spell tradition. Perhaps he'd get the Cathartic Mage alternate rule on there, too, so he can use his angsty emo-ness to cast spells.

Archetype: Shadowcaster. Impossible for him to not take this one, with all the shadow manipulation abilities!

#my art #linked universe #lu four #lu shadow #pathfinder chain #pathfinder #pf2e

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pathfinderunlocked · 7 months

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Healthy Boss Template (CR +3)

Wait, why did a giant health bar just appear in the sky?

Artwork by Jeff_Chee_471 on Reddit.

D&D and Pathfinder have a really unusual idea of what a "boss" is compared to, like, any video game ever made. They often tend to just take an enemy that would be part of a group of normal enemies if you were about six levels higher. When they do something more unique, it still tends to be balanced like that. Tons of offense, not that many hit points, but often extremely hard to hit. Adventure designers often try to make up for this design by making a boss weaker but giving it minions, but that doesn't change the fact that there's really no concept of a creature that's inherently a "boss creature" in this game.

And sometimes that's fine. But sometimes you just want a big chunky fight that's balanced more like how a video game boss is balanced: only a little more damage than other creatures, but way more health, and the ability to recover if you do nasty stuff like stun it. Something that lets the players go all-out using their abilities, and rewards them for doing so, instead of having to spend most of the fight just focusing on not getting attacked, because they know one attack can take them out.

This template isn't a global solution. It'll get old, and if you reuse it too much, players will find strategies that bypass it. That's why I design so many different boss monsters that each work differently. But if you want to convert an existing monster into a boss, this is one way to do so without a lot of effort, and without just giving it the advanced template and several fighter levels to max out its offense.

Some of the options for different abilities are there to deal with different kinds of player strategies, rather than because they're appropriate for different kinds of bosses. If your PCs use vital strike, give it vital negation. If they use combat maneuvers, give it reset stance. If they cast a bunch of spells on the terrain, give it undo. If they rely on hungry pit, give it escape to nowhere. Don't feel bad about using this template specifically to counter them, since the inflated HP and the limited uses of these special abilities mean that the players' strategies will still be useful, they just won't instantly win the fight.

Healthy Boss

Healthy boss is an inherited template that can be applied to any creature.

Challenge Rating: Same as the base creature + 3.

Hit Points: A healthy boss's hit points are three times as high as the base creature's.

Initiative: A healthy boss gains a +10 bonus to its initiative.

Defensive Abilities: A healthy boss can never be surprised, and is not considered flat-footed before it has acted in combat.

Special Abilities: A healthy boss gains 1 of the following special abilities:

Bolstering Cry (Ex) Twice per day as a move action, a healthy boss can grant all allies within 60 ft. a number of temporary hit points equal to its new challenge rating. When it does so, it also suppresses the following conditions on affected allies other than itself for 1 round: blinded, confused, entangled, fatigued, exhausted, nauseated, paralyzed, shaken, sickened, staggered, stunned. The healthy boss does not need line of effect to these allies, but they must be able to either see or hear it. Second Wind (Ex) Five times per day as a free action at the start of its turn, a healthy boss can gain a number of temporary hit points equal to its new challenge rating. These temporary hit points last for 10 minutes. It can only use this ability only once per round. Vital Negation (Ex) Once per round, a healthy boss can halve the damage of a single incoming source of damage. It can choose to use this ability after hearing the amount of damage that it would take. This does not require an action.

Additionally, a healthy boss gains 2 of the following other special abilities:

Aura of Recovery (Su) The healthy boss gains a 40-ft. aura. At the end of each of the healthy boss's turns, one of the healthy boss's allies within this aura (including itself) gains a new saving throw against any one ongoing harmful effect that initially allowed for a saving throw. Escape to Nowhere (Su) Once per day, at the end of an enemy's turn, a healthy boss can escape to the ethereal plane, as if using ethereal jaunt. This does not require an action. It remains in the ethereal plane during its next turn. At the start of its second turn after using this ability, the healthy boss returns to the plane it was on, but is staggered during that turn. Legendary Resistance (Ex) Once per day, when a healthy boss fails a saving throw, or when an enemy succeeds on a check against the healthy boss's spell resistance, the healthy boss can expend its legendary resistance to treat the roll as if the healthy boss had succeeded on the saving throw or the enemy had failed on the check against spell resistance. A healthy boss with a total challenge rating of at least 9 gains a second use of Legendary Resistance per day, and a healthy boss with a total challenge rating of at least 18 gains a third use of legendary resistance per day. This does not require an action. Reset Concentration (Ex) Once per day, when a healthy boss fails a concentration check, it can steel its mind against future distractions, gaining a +10 bonus on concentration checks for the next 10 minutes. This does not require an action. Reset Stance (Ex) Once per day, when a healthy boss starts its turn prone or grappled, at the start of its next turn after being successfully subjected to a combat maneuver other than trip or grapple, it can spend a move action to stand up, free itself from any grapples, pick up a single item within its reach, end the effect of a dirty trick maneuver, and move up to its move speed without provoking attacks of opportunity. Upon using this ability, the healthy boss also gains a +5 bonus to its CMD and a +10 bonus to Acrobatics, Climb, Ride, Swim, and Fly checks for the next 10 minutes. Undo (Su) As a standard action, once every 3 rounds, a healthy boss can revert the effects of any number of ongoing or instantaneous magic spells that are affecting itself, other creatures, or the surrounding environment. Each spell effect it attempts to undo must be within 60 ft. of the healthy boss, and must have been applied during the last 10 minutes. Even instantaneous spells can be reverted with Undo, but damage is not reverted. To attempt to undo a spell, a healthy boss makes a caster level check against a DC of 6 + the effect's caster level, using its hit dice as its caster level. If successful, the ongoing spell ends, or the effects of the instantaneous spell are reverted.

#d&d #pathfinder 1e #template

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thrawns-babygirl · 9 months

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Stake Out #2 (Thrawn x AFAB!GN Reader)

BACK FROM THE DEAD! I HAVE RETURNED WITH THRAWN SMUT

Actually kinda in love with this fic and probably going to write another part soon. The lack of Ascendancy era!Thrawn fics makes me wanna scream. But you know what they say, be the change you wanna see in the world.

(Reader has afab anatomy but is not gendered in any way)

Rating: E (18+) Warnings: Oral (F&M receiving), precum, deepthroating Word Count: 3700+

Masterlist

It’s been months since your encounter with the Chiss known as mid captain Mitth’raw’nuruodo. So long in fact that you thought maybe the two of you had been found out and perhaps you’d been blacklisted, forever cursed to never work with Senior Captain Ziara and the crew of the Parala ever again.

So, when you receive a new commission from your superior, informing you that the Parala was enroute towards the station and that you were to be ready within the hour, you were ecstatic. Packing a bag for what you assumed was probably going to be another long-haul mission, your thoughts drift back towards the stoic Chiss, the way he felt inside of you, the sound of his moans and you feel your face heat. Your excitement now replaced by a gnawing anxiety in the pit of your stomach.

Would he want a repeat performance? Did he still think about you the same way that you did him? It was hard to tell. The man was difficult to read when he was in the same room as you, let alone when the two of you hadn’t even inhabited the same star system in months.

Steeling your nerves, you sling your pack over your shoulder and make your way towards the hangar that the Parala was due to arrive at. Your questions would all be answered soon you suppose.

As always, the Chiss were as prompt and no nonsense as ever. The uniformed warriors greeting you at the ramp and leading you up into the bowels of the ship without as much as a glance in your direction.

You fiddle nervously with the strap of your pack, looking around the halls, trying to get a glimpse of one specific man amidst a sea of blue. You’d all but given up hope when a deep voice sounds from behind you.

“Pathfinder, it is good to see that you are well” the accented Minnisiat causes you to spin on your heel, face to face with the man who has plagued your thoughts each night you lay alone in your bunk since your last meeting.

“You as well mid captain” You give him a polite but genuine smile as you lock eyes with him. His lips quirk in a hint of a smile as he nods.

“We will be sent out in a small shuttle, our mission will primarily consist of reconnaissance and information gathering. Once you are ready, we can proceed to the shuttle” He turns and begins walking down the corridor and it takes a moment for you to realise that you’re meant to be following him.

Speeding up slightly to keep pace with his long strides, you take a deep breath. You can do this, you don’t need to make it awkward, he obviously is still willing to work with you, this is a good sign.

The two of you make your way to the shuttle in comfortable silence, and before you know it, you’re once again strapped into the navigator’s chair, sensory depravation helmet fastened securely over your head as you let yourself fall into the familiar trance.

Weaving your way through the chaos is second nature, the feeling of being one with the galaxy is comfortable, it makes you feel at ease, secure.

Before you know it, you are exiting your trance, your head feeling slightly groggy, your ears ringing, and a familiar feeling of disorientation wracks your form as you remove your helmet. Blinking a rapidly to clear the stars from your vision, you notice Thrawn standing right next to your chair what you can only assume is a vitamin beverage held in one hand.

“I have heard that navigating the chaos can be taxing on one’s body, please, take this” he extends the drink to you, and you feel yourself flush. No one is ever this kind to navigators; at most you are considered disposable and at worst you’re considered nothing more than an organic nav computer. This simple act of kindness is so out of the ordinary that it nearly makes you swoon.

“Thank you” you smile up at him as you take the drink with slightly trembling hands, the coolness of the metal container soothing you. It was a particularly long jump, longer than you’ve had to perform in a few cycles, and as you look down towards the nav computer and furrow your brow as you realise that you are in fact, in the middle of nowhere, barely any celestial bodies even registering on the scanners.

“You understand of course that I am not at liberty to divulge our current mission” He chimes in, as if sensing your confusion as to your current location. “and I must apologise in advance, but I do believe that we will be here a while.”

You take a sip of your drink and nod, feeling your strength returning as the cool liquid makes its way down your throat.

Here comes the awkward part, you think to yourself fighting a grimace. How do you bring up your last mission together? How do you ask if he wants a repeat performance or if it was just a one-time thing? You sigh and lean back against the headrest of the chair.

You realise Thrawn is still stiffly standing next to you, a tension in his stance that is uncommon even for the usual rigid way he holds himself and it dawns on you that he is probably thinking the same thing. His eyes are on you, scrutinizing you, examining you and you really hope that he simply thinks that the flush on your cheeks is just due to a straining navigation session and not the unprofessional and improper thoughts swirling in your head.

You remember that your last time together was his first, you remember the way that he let you set the pace and dictate the encounter, perhaps he’s waiting for you to do so again? You steel your nerves, determined to push the words up and out of your chest and quell your maddening anxiety when suddenly an alert chimes from behind him.

A flicker of disappointment flashes across his face as he looks towards its source.

“I apologise, I must check in with my captain” he nods his head respectfully before making his way towards the back of the ship to converse with Senior Captain Ziara, leaving you to sip on your canteen of vitamin water as you listen to the back and forth of Cheunh behind you.

You sigh to yourself. This is going to be a long mission.

You must have fallen asleep at some point, you awaken to the sight of a bare, muscled chest, Thrawn’s arm on your shoulder as he shakes you awake. You wipe away the drool from your mouth as you sit up quickly in the chair, rubbing your eyes as you take in the sight before you.

Mid Captain Thrawn, wearing a loose pair of thin pants, no shirt, no shoes, his hair slightly mussed. You run your eyes shamelessly over his body before shaking your head slightly and looking up to meet his eyes that are glittering with an almost imperceivable amount of amusement, a smug smirk painting his statuesque face.

“I do apologise for waking you, I thought it would be wiser to rest on a bed, lest you injure your neck” his voice is soft, like honey or silk, slightly raspy, or maybe you were imagining that?

Your faculties are failing you in the face of this gorgeous man standing shirtless before you, has he always been so built? Has he bulked since you last saw each other?

“Yes, thank you… I didn’t realise how drained I was” you inwardly kick yourself for how meek your voice sounds, the slight waver in it. You literally took this man’s virginity the last time the two of you were together and now here you are, feeling like a blushing virgin being exposed to the male form for the very first time. Focus up, you inwardly scold yourself.

You take off your boots before standing up, stretching out your sore limbs, heaving a sigh at the relief of finally moving after so many hours in the same chair. Extending your hands over your head, you miss the way his eyes rove over your form with barely restrained lust as he runs his glowing gaze over your body, the way his lips part slightly and his nostrils flair.

Looking around the small cabin of the shuttle, you take stock of the area, your eyes landing on the single bedroll that Thrawn has laid out for the night. Your breath hitches, did he… want the two of you to share a bed? Was this his sort of an indirect invitation? Again, using his uncanny ability to sense the thoughts going through your head at any given time, he answers your unspoken question.

“Given our last excursion together, I assumed that you would be willing to share a bed with me. I do apologise if that was presumptuous of me” his tone is flat as per usual, but there is a faint not of… something in his voice, nervousness? Dare you say… excitement?

“I would be more than willing mid captain” You smile at him, the tension lines on his face disappear as he smiles back at you. A genuine smile, a crack in his usual stoic façade as he takes your hand and leads you over towards the modest yet highly inviting bedding that he has laid out on the floor.

“Please, Thrawn is fine. Given our last meeting I believe there is no need for formalities”

His stride is confident, as if your consent to sleeping with him has assuaged any fears or nervousness he may have had about the time you are about to spend together. You follow along behind him, not even bothering to hide the giddy energy that radiates off of you as he lies down on the bedding, gently pulling you down with him so that the two of you are lying down face to face, so close that you feel the heat of his breath with each exhale.

“I have been thinking of our time together since we have been separated” his voice is quiet and husky “I have been… researching ways to make our next meeting more enjoyable” his voice is a whisper.

“Researching?” you ask in a voice that’s just as low as his, as if speaking too loudly will shatter the carefully built moment the two of you are sharing.

A tinge of violet reaches his cheekbones and he hesitates, as if nervous his choice of words has revealed too much about how he’s spent his time since your last time together.

He clears his throat “Indeed… I have been referencing some material of a… certain nature in order to further understand the intricacies of intimacy. I have had few interactions with humans and do not wish to encounter and social or cultural taboos” he runs his fingers lightly along your arm as he speaks and you wish you’d had the forethought to remove your course jumpsuit before lying down with him.

But its then that the implication of his words actually hit you. ‘Referencing material’ ‘certain nature’ has Thrawn been… watching porn? Mid captain Mitth’raw’nuruodo has been watching pornography thinking about you? Your head spins, images of Thrawn on his bed, naked, one hand wrapped around his throbbing length as he strokes himself to whatever the Chiss consider pornography sends a jolt of electricity down your spine straight to your core and brings a flush to your cheeks.

“And… what did you learn?” your voice is barely above a whisper as you move your fingers to run along the chiselled planes of his chest.

“That humans partake in certain acts that are… different to Chiss” his hand moves to the zipper of your jumpsuit slowly tugging it down over your chest revealing your thin tank top. As soon as the zipper is down far enough, the pushes the jumpsuit away from your shoulders and you lift yourself up slightly so that he can remove it from the top half of your body, exposing your arms to the chill of the cabin.

“Like… what?” you continue lightly running your fingers along his abs, slowly travelling further south towards the waistband of his loose pants, toying with the hem as your breaths mingle in the air in front of you. You don’t fail to notice the very large and obvious bulge tenting the fabric, the look of it indicating that the mid captain has forgone briefs in this particular instance, and you salivate at the thought.

“The use of ones… mouth for instance” he tugs at the jumpsuit again, pulling the material further down your hips and you shift to allow him the ability to remove the thick fabric from you entirely, leaving you in only a thin tank top and embarrassingly damp panties.

“Chiss don’t perform… oral?” you ask as you tug his pants further down his hips, revealing his adonis belt before his thick cock springs free of its confines, engorged and leaking, a steady stream of precum leaking from the tip and dripping down those delicious alien ridges.

He shakes his head as he kicks his pants off, moving so that he’s holding himself above you, resting on his elbows as he looks down at you, and for two people who have only shared a very fleeting and physical connection the position feels so… sensual, intimate even.

Without waiting for any further invitation, his lips are on yours, his tongue in your mouth. This is a vastly more confident Thrawn than last time and you have to snuff out the slight spark of jealousy at the idea that he’s sought out other companions during your time apart. Instead of lingering on that intrusive thought, you run your nails down his back, deepening the kiss as he ruts his hips against you, dragging his length along the soaked fabric of your panties causing you to let out a soft moan into his mouth.

The two of you lose yourselves in the kiss, lips dancing and tongues mingling as your hands travel over each other’s bodies. Thrawn finally pulls away from your lips, face flushed and panting softly, before he begins kissing along your jaw and neck, sucking, licking and occasionally biting at the soft flesh as he moves himself down to your collarbone. He lavishes you with attention, his lips travelling along your body as he pulls your tank top up over your head, leaving your breasts exposed. Without hesitation, he latches his lips on your nipple, sucking on one while tweaking the other with his long fingers, occasionally alternating between the two, giving them equal attention.

At this point you’re an incoherent mess. Panting, moaning and writhing beneath his form as he lavishes you with attention, his lips not leaving a single spot on your torso unattended as he works his way lower and lower down your body. He’s breathing heavily as he begins licking a long stripe over the already soaked material of your panties and you let out a guttural moan that you’re too far gone to even be embarrassed about.

Spurred on by your response, Thrawn tugs enthusiastically at the flimsy material of your panties, tearing them off your body before moving your thighs over his shoulders to devour you. His tongue is a slightly different texture than what you’re used to, and the added stimulation ignites a fire in your lower belly as he ravenously eats you. He seems intent on not letting a single drop of you go to waste, his tongue alternating between long broad strokes along your slit, fucking in and out of your cunt and swirling around your clit with an accuracy that makes your vision swim and the coil in your belly wind tighter and tighter.

You move your hands into his hair, fingers tugging on the blue-black locks causing a guttural almost pornographic moan to rip from his chest as he redoubles his efforts, intent on dining on you like a man starved. He moves to focusing solely on your clit, his tongue licking and swirling along the bundle of nerves as he tentatively prods your entrance with a single finger and moans into your folds causing your back to arch off the bedding and your fingers to tighten in his hair.

He adds a second finger, curling them at just the right angle and you’re sent over the edge. Stars burst behind your eyes as your body is wracked by one of the most intense orgasms you have ever experienced, your thighs tighten around his head, and you scream in pleasure. His mouth and tongue still doing their sinful work, prolonging your bliss as you ride your high into overstimulation.

He keeps going until you tug on his hair to pull him away from you, the pleasure swiftly morphing into discomfort as his tongue runs along your oversensitive clit. He sits up on his knees between your legs, chin slick with your juices as he licks his lips before he dives in for another kiss, grinding his neglected cock against your slick folds as you taste yourself on his tongue.

You gently push him away so that you can finally catch your breath, you stare up at him, wide eyed and in awe of his skill, despite the apparent knowledge that Chiss don’t engage in oral sex.

“Was that satisfactory?” he asks with a small smile that indicates he already knows the answer and you give him a blissed-out smile.

“Far more than satisfactory” you pant, your body still being rocked by the aftershocks of your orgasm. “You sure you’ve never done that before?”

“Quite sure” he says with a breathy chuckle as his hand goes to his cock, relieving some of the pressure as he strokes himself slowly, seemingly content to watch you bathe in the afterglow of your pleasure.

You glance down at his length, the tip an angry purple that is drooling precum, the sight makes your mouth water, and you want nothing more than to return the favour. Your body feels like jelly, but you manage to find the strength to sit up, reversing your positions so that he is laying back on the bed while you kneel between his spread thighs.

You begin kissing down his neck, sucking purple marks onto it just below where his high uniform collar will cover it as he writhes beneath you, obviously attempting to control himself. He grips the sheets, panting and giving slight grunts as you kiss your way down his chest, stopping partway to lick and suck on his nipples before continuing your journey south. You run your tongue along his abs, into the dips where his precum has pooled and swallow it down, maintaining eye contact with him the whole time before you give the tip of his cock a soft kiss.

His back arches, his hands moving from the sheets to the back of your head to tangle in your hair as he mutters to himself in Cheunh. Maintaining eye contact, you lick a stripe from base to tip and are rewarded with a loud grunt as the muscles in his chest flex and it’s obvious that despite only just starting, his restraint is tenuous.

Deciding that tenuous is still too much for your liking, your take him in your mouth as far down as he will go, gagging as the tip hits the back of your throat, one hand moving to stroke what you can’t fit in your mouth. The sounds you drag from him as he’s engulfed in the warm, wet heat of your mouth is nothing short of pornographic, his hips thrust up slightly of their own accord, forcing himself further down your throat until he seems to force himself to keep his hips still.

You bob your head up and down, your tongue running over the ridges as you suck and draw as many of those delicious sounds from him as you can, focusing extra attention to the head as you attempt to take even more of his girth down your throat. His hips start thrusting up of their own accord again and you attempt to relax your throat, allowing him to use your mouth as he wants to, each stroke going deeper and deeper until your nose is pressed against his crotch and you hold yourself there, swallowing around him.

His moans increase in volume and his thrusts begin to get sloppy, muttering a single word in Cheunh repeatedly “Ttis'ah… Ttis'ah…” and you redouble your efforts, taking him deep into your throat until “I- I am about to-” he meets your eyes as he attempts to warn you, but you only take him as deep into your throat as you can.

His hands hold your head down as he cums, spilling rope after rope of hot, white seed, his cock throbbing and twitching as he empties himself down your throat and slumping back onto the bedding, panting as he regains his senses.

You pull off of his cock with a lewd pop, licking your lips after swallowing every last drop of his cum and smiling down at him as he looks up at you, eyes half lidded, hair mussed, sweat beading on his brow.

“I… do not understand why this is not something Chiss do… that was… Ch'esehn” he says after steadying his breathing and heartrate, opening his arms to you for you to lay against his chest. You laugh softly looking up at him.

“Ch'esehn?” You ask, attempting to replicate the strange word but failing to pronounce it with the same fluidity that he does.

“Amazing… magnificent… beyond words” he translates for you, moving one arm tighter around you as the two of you lay naked together and you feel a spark of pride that you managed to make him feel so good.

“How long are we going to be out here?” you ask as you gaze up at the ceiling of the shuttle.

“Long enough that we shall have ample opportunity to… explore far more things together” he kisses the top of your head “but for now, rest. We will have more time to spend together after we regain our strength.”

You let your eyes close, feeling Thrawn rubbing his thumb over your shoulder in small circles and you can’t help but feel a twinge of dread in the pit of your stomach as you realise that you are in fact falling for this man.

@al-astakbar @novemberblueskyink @khapikat222 @mitth-eli-vanto @blackmonitor @ele-millennial-weirdo @thrawnspetgoose

#thrawn x reader #thrawn smut #thrawn x reader smut #grand admiral thrawn #admiral thrawn #thrawn #mitth'raw'nuruodo

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ultraflavour · 9 months

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7 Fantasy RPGs to fill the D&D-shaped Hole in your Life

So. It finally happened. Either Hasbro, or Wizards of the Coast, or someone else associated with Dungeons & Dragons finally did something so fucked-up that you've decided to swear it off entirely.

The problem is that for decades, there has been one obvious answer to the question of "What game with Dwarves, Longswords and Wizards in it should we play" and that was D&D, every time. Even their strongest rival in the past couple of decades was just an older version of D&D with a spit shine.

Now you find yourself adrift in a sea of possibility, with no signposts. There are names you've heard, but you have no idea which ones you'd actually be interested in, because you had always just assumed you'd be playing D&D until the heat death of the universe.

So let's take a look at a few games that want to fill that D&D-shaped hole in your gaming life, and examine what they're offering.

Disclaimer: I'm not covering the entire breadth and depth of the TTRPG industry here. I'm specifically going to be covering Fantasy RPGs that should appeal to D&D fans here. So if I didn't cover your favourite indie RPG, sorry. But there has to be a "First step" outside of the D&D bubble, and each of these games should fulfill that need.

The Other "Kitchen Sink" Game: Pathfinder

If you can't bring yourself to keep playing the corporate game, but you still want something that offers as close to that gameplay experience as you can possibly get, your best bet at the time of this writing is probably Pathfinder 2nd Edition.

I say this as someone who very much did not vibe with the original Pathfinder, or its "D&D in space" sister product Starfinder. But at this point, I'd absolutely tell a newcomer to jump into Pathfinder 2E before I recommended they buy any WotC product.

To their credit, the 2nd Edition of Pathfinder does much more to, uh, find its own path by diverging from 3.5 edition and implementing new systems that take it into uncharted territory. The "Two Actions Per Turn" paradigm is often cited by its proponents as being a meaningful improvement over the 5E way of doing things.

The "TTJRPG": Fabula Ultima

One of the biggest success stories of the early 20's was Fabula Ultima from NEED Games in Italy. It came seemingly out of nowhere to win the ENnie Gold Award for Best Game of 2023. Since then it's become notoriously difficult to find in print, though it's still freely available as a PDF.

Fabula Ultima is a "TTJRPG," modelled after Japanese fantasy video games like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Phantasy Star, Breath of Fire, etc. While it's firmly planted in the Fantasy genre, its gameplay will also very recognizable to fans of those types of games.

The major benefit of this conceit is that you can probably already picture how combat in FabUlt works in your mind: Two rows of characters take turns jumping and slashing at each other, or casting magical spells to harm, heal, or apply status conditions. There's no concept of "Spacing," but the game still manages to be mechanically intricate with lots of varied class abilities and status effects to apply.

D&D refugees looking for a game where you simply pick a class and fight some monsters, but aren't too particular about how they do that, will find a lot to love here. FabUlt leans much more heavily on storytelling mechanics than D&D does, so players who've been looking for something a bit more "Theater of the Mind" should be well taken care of here.

Final Fantasy Lancer: ICON

Like Fabula Ultima, ICON is a TTRPG that takes heavy inspiration from JRPGs, specifically tactical games like Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre. It's from Massif Press, who also authored the surprise indie Mech combat hit Lancer.

And like Lancer, ICON is a game with two very distinct rulesets: Outside of combat, a "Fiction-first" narrative system inspired heavily by Blades in the Dark; In combat, a grid-based tactical skirmish game reminiscent of D&D 4th Edition. All backed by the gorgeous art of its author Tom Parkinson-Morgan, who also writes and illustrates the comic Kill Six Billion Demons.

ICON separates its "narrative" class system from its combat class system, giving each character two distinct character sheets that come into play at different times. Because those two systems don't have to cross over very much, each can be as intricate or as rules-light as it needs to be to promote the type of gameplay most appropriate for the situation.

The Old-School Gateway Drug: Shadowdark

If you ever took a few steps outside of the walled garden that is D&D in the past few years, you will likely have read or heard of the OSR, or "Old-School Revival/Renaissance." Proponents of the OSR are players who yearn for an older style of Dungeon Crawling Survival Horror game that hearkens back to the early days of D&D, before the players became akin to superheroes.

Shadowdark aims to be a game that bridges the gap to that style of gameplay, without being totally unfamiliar to players who only ever learned 5th Edition mechanics. It's "Old-School gaming, modernized."

Aside from simply being a modern take on a D20 fantasy game, it freshens up gameplay using a mechanic called the "Torch Timer." It turns light into a resource that dwindles in real time. This serves to elevate the tension of the game as every minute that passes is one less minute of light on your torch. And when the torches run out, well... You can probably guess what happens next.

5th Edition with the Serial Numbers Filed Off: Tales of the Valiant

Tell me if you've heard this one before: Wizards of the Coast introduces sweeping changes to its "Open" license model, leading existing 3rd-party content creators to create their own version of an older ruleset to protect the viability of their backlog. It happened in the past, but what are the chances that happens a second time? Ha!

Well... It did happen again. This time, playing the role of the "Paizo" in this scenario is Kobold Press, who loudly declared that they were "Raising the Black Flag" in response. In order to ensure that there would always be a "Core Fantasy" ruleset that would remain compatible with their content, they announced Tales of the Valiant, which would essentially duplicate the 5th Edition ruleset with a bit of a spit shine, in much the same way that Pathfinder did for 3.5 Edition.

Tales of the Valiant will be the game for the D&D player who just wanted a rules refresh of 5th Edition, but also doesn't want to keep throwing money at the corporate hegemony. It should end up being "The 5E you can feel good about supporting," and that matters right now.

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Matt Colville's Big Bet: The MCDM RPG

Kobold Press was not the only publisher of third-party D&D content to have a strong reaction to the OGL fiasco. Unlike Tales of the Valiant however, Matt Colville's response was to announce a fully new Fantasy RPG system, with no expectation of backwards compatibility with any edition of D&D.

MCDM's sights are firmly set on the "Post-Kitchen-Sink" future, and to that end their game is explicitly not trying to be the one game for every possible playstyle. It's Tactical, meaning you'll need a grid to play it on, and it's Heroic, meaning characters should feel powerful, and not like they're constantly one critical hit or failed trap-sensing check away from being decapitated.

This approach might seem like a massive risk considering how insanely powerful 5th Edition became at its peak. But a record-breaking crowdfunding campaign backed by over 30,000 people shows that there is at least an appetite for something new, and that there is a like-minded community of players ready and waiting to join you.

The Critical Role Game: Daggerheart

If the Kobold Press announcement was a shot across the bow, and the MCDM crowdfunder was a bomb dropped, then Daggerheart is a full-blown asteroid, streaking straight towards Wizards of the Coast HQ.

Daggerheart is an original Fantasy RPG from Darrington Press, the publishing arm of the Critical Role media company. That by itself should mean something considering how important CR is to the D&D brand, but there's more to talk about here. Though it superficially resembles D&D in a lot of ways, it has some extremely important differences. Namely, its use of "Powered by the Apocalypse" mechanics such as "Fail Forward" dice rolling and "No Initiative" combat.

While "PbtA" has become somewhat of a loaded term in the D&D community, Critical Role has an opportunity to overcome that stigma with the sheer force of their platform. I've made this case already in the past, but if they were to use their power to do for themselves what they did for 5th Edition, it would be the most significant threat to the Hasbro Hegemony to emerge since Pathfinder. Let alone taking just a slice, Daggerheart has the long-term potential to take the whole damn pie.

And more!

The games I've listed here are all theoretically capable of replacing the Corpo game as your "go-to" long-term game. Not all of them are fully playable as of this writing, but they all represent one possible future for the "Sword and Sorcery" RPG genre.

There are of course a whole plethora of other games out there beyond the limited scope of "Medieval Fantasy" that are just as valid and just as viable, if you're feeling a bit more adventurous.

If you're looking for something explicitly tactical like a miniature skirmish game, but still in the RPG genre, and you're willing to expand your choice of genre beyond Euro-centric Medieval Fantasy even further beyond ICON, you might be interested in Gubat Banwa or the aforementioned Lancer.

If you want a game that promotes a slightly more streamlined, less mechanically-intricate approach to combat while still giving you tons of monsters to kick the shit out of, you might want to check out the "Illuminated by LUMEN" family of games inspired by the games LIGHT and NOVA from Gila RPGs. It might even inspire you to write your own RPG!

If you're more interested in the Old-School Renaissance, you might want to check out Forbidden Lands, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Old-School Essentials, or MÖRK BORG.

If you like the idea of "Old-School Roleplaying" but are also willing to step outside of the fantasy genre into Sci-fi territory, you might be interested in Stars Without Number, its Cyberpunk sister product Cities Without Number, or Mothership.

Finally, if you just want a game that focuses on telling the best story rather than mindlessly killing monsters and acquiring loot, you might want to check out Blades in the Dark, Thirsty Sword Lesbians, Girl by Moonlight, Coyote and Crow, and many more Fiction-First games in the Powered by the Apocalypse and Forged in the Dark genres.

But most importantly: Just play more games! Don't just buy them, play them! The point of this whole exercise is to replace the monopoly with a plurality, for the sake of the health of the tabletop gaming industry.

Because the next time Hasbro lays off a bunch of WotC employees, there should be a much stronger, more diverse industry for them to land in feet-first. We should all want for the people who build the games we love to feel safe in their career choice. Not just for the sake of the ones who are already there, but for future prospective designers and artists who want to make their mark.

It should be viable to be a tabletop game designer outside of just making more D&D stuff forever, because as we've seen, it's not safe to assume that we can all just keep doing the same thing we've been doing and not get bit on the ass by it.

If we want that future, we have to take it into our own hands and build it ourselves. But if there's one group of people that knows about building something very big from very little, it's TTRPG players.

#ttrpg #icon rpg #icon ttrpg #mcdm #pathfinder #fabula ultima #kobold press #tales of the valiant #daggerheart

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dare-to-dm · 2 months

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How does playing a prepared spellcaster go for your games in Pathfinder? Having to prepare spells at specific levels always turned me away from those classes, so I don't know what it's like in practice

Honestly, it goes just fine. I'm the type of person who makes spreadsheets for fun, so classes that require a bit more preparation aren't a huge turn off for me.

How it goes in practice is that I have a set of spells that make up my baseline preparation for any given day. That way I have a starting point full of my favorites that I'm familiar with and don't have to think about too much. And then if I know we're getting ready to do something specific, I'll make alterations. For example, if I know we're planning on fighting undead, I'll swap in spells that specifically work well against them. Or if we're going into a town where I don't expect there to be as much combat, I might swap out some damaging spells for utility and/or buffing spells.

It's nice having the flexibility to swap in spells! I prefer it compared to playing a spontaneous caster who has limited options.

There's still a challenge in terms of deciding how often to prepare specific spells. Like, should you prepare fireball twice, or would it be better to only prepare it once and then have another third level spell? In general, my philosophy is that having more options is better. So I'll almost always prep a different spell in each slot. For spells that I think I'll want to cast more often, there are lots of way to make sure I have all the access to them that I need. For example, you can use scrolls, potions, wands, staffs and other magic items to get access to your favorite magic without using up precious spell slots. Pathfinder also has plenty of other tricks you can use to get around limited spellslots:

Wizards get the Scribe Scroll feat, allowing them to create scrolls that can be used later

Any class can take skills and feats that allow potion/magic item creation, which is another way to bolster your arsenal if you have the time

Clerics can spontaneously change any prepared spell into a healing spell of the same level, which frees them up to prepare other thing without having to worry that they won't have enough healing if something unexpected happens. Also, Pathfinder clerics get healing bursts that don't count against their spellslots at all, which is great!

Similarly, druids can spontaneously change any of their prepared spells into Summon Nature's Ally!

Prepared spellcasters also have the option of leaving some spell slots empty and then filling them up later in the day, though that takes at least 15 minutes.

There are a myriad of archetypes for every different class, giving you the option to explore other flavors and specializations of spell casting.

If all of this sounds daunting to you, there's no problem with sticking to martial classes or spontaneous casters. Every prepared caster in Pathfinder has its spontaneous equivalent; Sorcerers for wizards, oracles for clerics, hunters for druids, etc.

Pathfinder 1E has so many options, it's great. If you're willing to do a little digging, you can almost always find an archetype to build the kind of character you want.

#thanks for the question!#asks #Pathfinder #Dare Original #don't ask me about 2nd edition though

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thydungeongal · 9 days

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I'm curious what your thoughts are on nWoD/Chronicles of Darkness -- I searched your blog but couldn't find any posts about it. I've enjoyed reading the rules and splats for it and I love the vibes in general, but I don't have much experience actually playing it (my friends back when I played more were "5e can do everything" people or fans of crunchier games like 3.5 and Pathfinder). I'd be interested to hear your opinions about its design strengths/weaknesses and the type of game it's best designed for, and whether you think its approach to social play works well. I'd also love to hear any recommendations you have for other games with similar vibes I might like to check out.

I think I have talked about it previously, but Tumblr's search function being what it is I'm not surprised it came up. Anyway, my experience with nWoD is, for now, entirely theoretical. I like a lot of what I have seen of it: at least superficially it fixes a lot of my issues with the systems of oWoD, and I actually prefer nWoD's worldbuilding to oWoD even though it does end up missing the gothic punk aspect I love about oWoD. It seems, on the surface, much more gameable!

I don't remember how nWoD approaches social gameplay off the top of my head, so instead I'm going to talk about something I love love love about it: Vices and Virtues are SUCH an inspired dual system for incentivizing strong characterization!

But yeah, in comparison to oWoD which ultimately plays like goth superheroes, at least on the surface the vibes I get from nWoD is that it's much more down-to-earth in many ways, and while it still allows player characters to be strong it is much less about empowering the player characters and much more about the horror of actually being a monster!

Anyway, if you enjoy urban fantasy of the nWoD variety I do think @anim-ttrpgs's Eureka is worth checking out! It is ultimately an investigative game, but also has urban fantasy as a major element, and that includes the potential of monstrous player characters, and the systems of the game very much encourage monsters grappling with the morality of their monstrous nature! Anyway, on a scale of "how much of a supernatural conspiracy is there," if nWoD is like in the middle and oWoD is in the "a lot" sector, then Eureka is pretty much on the opposite side. It takes a much more mythological approach to monsters and the supernatural, so you won't end up with like vampire covenants doing vampire politics together.

Monsterhearts is also in the broad genre of monsters doing monster things, but it's also specifically about teenage monsters. It's basically a TTRPG love letter to the Vampire Diaries, Ginger Snaps, Jennifer's Body, Carrie, and such. It's one of my favorite games ever. Not quite on the same ground as nWoD, but a fantastic game on its own merits.

#thydungeongal answers

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baronfulmen · 1 year

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Holy shit Pathfinder 2e is even better than I was expecting you guys

Look I don't want to dump a long post on everyone but please click to read more. Come on. It's actually interesting.

Okay so I know Tumblr, here to get you interested is a fun fact: There's a specific god that will help you trans your gender.

The rest is more about rules and gameplay but click anyway.

Having three totally interchangeable actions per turn is SO GOOD, and having actions worth doing means you don't end up just doing the same thing every turn like in 5e.

Anyone, regardless of class, can choose to use their turn to:

Move, move, and move again.

Attack, attack, and attack again (not actually a good strategy but it's nice to have the option).

Roll intimidation to make the enemy frightened, trip them (which is more likely to succeed now that they're frightened), and then hit them (which is more likely to work now that they're on the ground).

Move, shoot someone, then duck behind cover.

Cast multiple spells if you know spells (most often good spells cost two actions to cast, but some cost one so you could cast 2-3 spells in a single turn sometimes).

Cast a spell (if you know spells) that is the equivalent of a concentration spell in 5e, and then use an action to keep the one you cast last turn going too (then next turn you can use an action to sustain BOTH of them and also do a third thing).

Hit someone, step back out of their range without provoking an attack of opportunity (though wonderfully most people can't do those anyway which means people actually move around in combat thank god) and then raise a shield to get an AC boost.

Roll to recall what the thing you're fighting is weak against, attack it, and then (because that first action told you it has a gaze attack) avert your eyes.

Etc.

That's without any feats or class features (I mean as noted above not everyone knows spells and stuff but you get what I mean) and there are other actions I didn't even mention. PLUS, it means spells can do different things for different numbers of actions!

(Those little diamond shapes are actions, so you can see that this one spell can be cast for one, two, or three actions with different effects)

2. Degrees of success mean that things don't fail outright as much and you can get bonus effects from tons of things. Also it means that every little bit helps which encourages strategic gameplay (like the tripping and intimidating stuff mentioned above).

Rolling ten or more higher than your target is a critical success, and missing it by ten or more is a critical failure. Also, getting a nat 1 or nat 20 changes the degree of success by one level. So you can get a nat 20 on something way out of your league and have it bumped from a failure to a success, or you can roll so well that you crit succeed just because you got a 31 on a DC 20 save or something (numbers are bigger in Pathfinder because you add your level to almost everything, but it's all balanced out and is fine I promise).

Like, look at what tripping does:

Or spells!

See, it's not purely save-or-suck!

3. There are so many cool ways to customize your character!

Pathfinder 2e is built on feats, but unlike 5e they're actually balanced. You get skill feats! You get class feats! You get ancestry feats! A lot of them are minor by themselves but FUN and you get SO MANY that no two characters will ever be alike. You can also (optionally) take an Archetype that lets you kinda sorta multiclass into not only other classes or a medic or a special kind of whatever but also random shit like "guess you're a ghost now".

Right now there are 3,983 feats. Yes really. This isn't as intimidating as it might sound; a lot are for specific classes, specific archetypes, specific ancestries, or for skills your particular character doesn't care about. Some are also restricted to higher levels, or have other requirements like having a certain skill at X rank or having some other earlier feat. Also at any given time you're looking for a particular type of feat, so your list will be smaller and totally manageable. It's 100% fine and easy to pick one. Like, when I was picking a level 2 class feat for my summoner these were my options:

Not so many that it's overwhelming or anything, but because you (over time) select so many different kinds of feats it really lets you fine tune your character to be whatever you imagine.

4. There are specific rules for things you can do while wandering through a dungeon or the wilderness or whatever!

Yes, sure, in 5e you can say "uh, I'm gonna keep casting Guidance over and over as we walk" or something, but a lot of the things people ask to do are hard to rule on. Can they really be constantly ready in case combat breaks out? How do you give them an advantage for that sort of thing without it just being a free buff?

But in PF2e there's rules for that! If you think there's gonna be combat, you can take actions such as:

Scout! This means if a fight breaks out everyone gets a +1 to initiative!

Avoid Notice! This means if a fight breaks out you roll your stealth for initiative rather than perception (everyone is trained in perception and it's the default thing you roll for initiative, but theoretically the GM could have you roll anything, like if you were trying to act friendly and then surprise attack maybe you'd roll deception) and if you roll well you can start combat hidden!

Defend! This means if a fight breaks out you start with your shield already up, raising your AC!

And then there's non-combat focused stuff too, like searching and keeping detect magic up and all sorts of stuff. There's a whole page of activities.

5. Some of the magic items are really funny.

#pf2e #pathfinder #pathfinder 2nd edition #5e #tabletop rpgs

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monstersdownthepath · 10 months

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Monster Spotlight: Hyakume

CR 15

Neutral Evil Large Aberration

Bestiary 4, pg. 153 (pic from 2nd Edition's Bestiary 3, pg. 139)

These wicked beasts haunt libraries, temples, ruins, and anywhere else that vast collections of knowledge may steadily accumulate in, protecting these locales from intruders until they've thoroughly studied and committed to memory every single book, scroll, grimoire, carving, and relief. And then destroy them so no one else can have the knowledge they've gained. Yes, far from guardians of knowledge or protectors of forbidden secrets, the Hyakume are jealous hoarders of information both mundane and fantastic, poring over hundreds of even thousands of books ranging from common poetry to door-stopping spellbooks in their lifetime before hurling the books into a fire to prevent anyone else from learning what they have. They smash apart carvings, rip scrolls to shreds, and go out of their way to hide whatever they cannot destroy in a manner it is unlikely to ever be recovered from, all out of a petty need to be the only one who knows a specific fact.

They rarely ever share their secrets and, even when they do, it's always at a terrible price. Sometimes, though, they settle for an exchange of memory; they can use Share Memory at-will to gift someone with what they know, or copy memories from a victim into their own mind. The memories a Hyakume demands as payment are varied as the creatures themselves, but luckily Share Memory merely copies them, it doesn't remove them altogether! That's what Drain Memories is for, this cruel 1/day ability allowing the Hyakume to simply take everything from its victim at once if the victim fails a DC 28 Will save. Such a victim is stripped of experience and identity, becoming an amnesiac that's permanently charmed by the knowledge-hoarder, barely able to remember whatever they could do before and now subservient to the horror that stole their mind. A Hyakume's body is a vast repository for information, but they can only store so many collected minds; 4 at a time to be exact, and they can only 'make room' for a new memory hoard by begrudgingly using Transfer Memories on a willing creature 1/day... But it doesn't have to be the original victim, leaving the poor soul stuck with amnesia and the new guy bombarded with a second identity until Modify Memory or similar is cast on them to undo the damage.

Why they do this, where they come from, and how they've come to be this way are all mysteries. The complexity of their kits and the lovely art pieces accompanying their entries have left precious little room for actual lore across both editions of Pathfinder, and it was only in 2nd Edition (eight years after they first showed up in Bestiary 4!) that we got the tidbit that they're jealous collectors of information. They share much in common with the Earth-born yokai from which they draw their inspiration, so perhaps Hyakume merely manifest in areas with high concentrations of information, or are drawn to such locations in a manner similar to cockroaches being drawn to unprotected storerooms. Perhaps they're the result of lore-hungry maniacs learning a secret so horrible and so world-shaking that their body must twist and churn into a vessel capable of containing it... or perhaps they're small pieces of something else, reaching into the universe.

Maybe they're this, maybe they're that, but you know what isn't a maybe? That they're incredibly dangerous. The mythical Hyakume relies on its terrifying appearance to scare away would-be invaders of their sacred libraries, but in Pathfinder, where just being an eye-covered blob is alarming but not mortally terrifying enough to deter would-be scroll thieves, they need a little more punch. And punch they HAVE; two of them, in fact, which deal 3d6+4 damage each! Not especially dangerous on their own thanks to the low flat damage, but here's where the spice comes in: A Hyakume has Monk Abilities, allowing it to swiftly incapacitate any creature that enters its 10ft melee reach AND use various spells from the Quinggong Monk list 3/day each: Cold Ice Strike, which deals 15d6 Cold damage in a 30ft line; Discordant Blast, which deals 3d6 Sonic damage in either a 10ft burst or 30ft cone and knocks back everyone inside as if they were bull-rushed; and Sonic Thrust, which allows it to hurl up to 370 pounds of objects or creatures directly away from itself.

Here's something weird, though: Monk Abilities says that the creature is considered a 15th level Monk for its slam attack damage and its Stunning Palm feat, and the Stunning Palm feat directly states "may be used a number of times per day equal to his Monk level," but on the Hyakume's stat sheet, it can only use Stunning Palm 4/day. This may be in the interest of fairness, but it is a little weird that Monk Abilities goes out of its way to state that the Hyakume is treated as a 15th level Monk, only to not treat it as a 15th level Monk in the most important way it has on its sheet, nor does it grant the knowledge-seekers anything else useful like Flurry of Blows or additional movement speed. Without the ability to make a bunch of Stunning Palm attacks to give it time to actually work, a Hyakume surrounded by a party is swiftly done for (Discordant Burst can give them SOME breathing room, but not enough); they have no DR or any particularly potent elemental defenses aside from immunity to Cold and some meager resistance to Electricity and Fire, so they rely wholly on their 32 AC and being able to stun anyone trying to attack them to let them actually keep up with a 10~12th-level melee character's damage output. At the very least, their obvious All-Around Vision negates flanking and sneak attacks.

Of course, the best way to avoid being peeled by a Barbarian is to avoid ever being in melee with one, and a Hyakume is shockingly good at that. They have Clairvoyance/Clairaudience at will to let them keep an invisible eye on the world around them, and Divination at 5/day to peer into the future and get a glimpse of anyone who may interrupt their ravenous research. If they sense danger in a given day, they can send out upwards to six Eye Probes to scout the area in a mile around them. These Fine-sized, extremely swift (50ft) probes are all but impossible to spot flying around in the darkness, and the Hyakume can see perfectly through all of them at any time, its own darkvision and low-light vision functioning through the probes. There's no listed action associated with commanding its Eye Probes, so I'm assuming that unless it takes a particular action to do so, commanding them is a free action it can take 1/round, and they autonomously fulfill these commands ("go here," "come back," etc) if given no orders otherwise.

It is thus next to impossible to catch a Hyakume off-guard, assuring it'll be prepared to get the surprise round... and it'll be real surprising, because at least one of you might not even remember why you're there. Remember Drain Memory? Because Hyakume can use it through their Eye Probes, too. The horrors might not even HAVE to fight the party if they have no way to undo the memory loss, as the horror can hold the identity of their former ally hostage and force them to comply with its wishes, all the while the party member who's mind got stolen has a new best friend to fight along with if it comes to it. If it's feeling especially sadistic, the hoarder may strike its hostage (or someone else it's caught off guard) with Quivering Palm, potentially killing them outright at any time within the next 15 days if they don't do exactly as it says.

They're not exactly extreme threats in straight-up combat, but a Hyakume is excellent as a plot hook nonetheless with its ability to pilfer a lifetime from a victim with a single touch. Slaying the creature doesn't free the trapped memories, only magic (or the Aberration's will) does, so a party confronting a Hyakume with an especially precious mind held within it will have to find another way to get it back!

You can read more about them here.

#monster spotlight #CR 11 to 15 #Pathfinder #dungeons and dragons

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