#pretty sure i am not normal

[solarflame33]

What's your favourite TTRPG?

someone asking about my hyperfixiation?

alright baby it's time, im going to answer that question in the longest way i can. I was going to try to structure it before i realized i have no idea how, so instead ill just infodump with whatever structure i make up as i go.

To preface this, i have a taste of course, and that is cool fight games, i like systems that really get into the nitty-gritty of character building and tactical choices in combat, I do not particularly care for roleplaying systems as me and my groups are very good at roleplaying on our own, we already make lengthy conversations between our characters, ask questions etc without really needing prompting, so i like systems that focus on the fighting since that certainly needs robust enough rules for my liking, i need to see damage numbers for my brain to buzz. I want to make big sword ladies that can split people in half and i need the system to support that.

Pathfinder 2e

So, as of now my favorite system is pathfinder 2e, its elegant 3 action system tickles my brain, it allows for interesting tactical choices (do i stride to flank the enemy even if I don't know whether it has attacks of opportunity or do I just take my chances with my strikes? do i make a second attack at -5 or do i try to aid an ally? etc) while still having a concrete and finite end to your turn, once you used all 3 actions that's that.

The problem a lot of people have with this system is that most things you could do in d&d 5e with an object interaction become one whole action, like drawing a weapon or opening a door, getting up from prone is also a whole action. To a certain extent i agree it is annoying, however I think the limitations imposed by the system can create much more interesting choices, especially when taking into account another great feature of the system, traits.

Pretty much everything in pf2 has traits, most of the time these traits are just tags like the fire trait which just tells you whatever has this trait has fire, while some have extra effects like the attack trait that means actions with this trait are affected by multiple attack penalty. Traits inform you of how stuff interacts with each other in a clean simple way, for instance some enemies (not all!) have an ability called attack of opportunity that lets them attack as a reaction when you take certain actions, how do you know which actions? simple, all actions with the move and manipulate trait (and ranged attacks).

On the note of attacks of opportunity I'll mention an example of one of my favorite moments of the system, I was playing a level 9 automaton barbarian, we were fighting a knight on a nightmare (hell horsey), we were in a hallway with the knight in front of me and our rogue behind me, i had just been brought back to consciousness by our rogue after the knight knocked me out, what that means is that im prone and my greataxe has been dropped while in reach of the knight, standing from prone and grabbing the weapon are both actions that trigger attacks of opportunity and I know this enemy has it, I consider my options since an attack of opportunity would likely knock me out again, my unarmed attacks arent great and being prone gives a penalty to hit, so i try to grapple (an attack that is unaffected by being prone as it is an athletics check rather than an attack roll) in hopes of getting the chance to use my remaining two actions to use my arcane slam feat (that only works on a grappled target) to knock him prone. However i fail my grapple attempt, so im left with two actions, still prone and without a weapon in hand, and then i remember at 8th lvl i took friendly toss, a feat that allows me to grab an ally and throw them, moreover, they get to make an attack as a reaction at the end of their movement. So i grab the rogue behind me by the leg and i yeet her on the other side of the knight, thus flanking the knight, granting sneak attack, and thanks to flanking she crits him and kills him.

Besides being a sick as fuck moment why did i tell you this? Well because i think this represents pretty well how it works, pf2 rewards versatility, most of your damage scales mostly automatically, especially as a martial character most of your choice of abilities will be about extra options that help you in certain situations, I've had the most fun building characters in pf2 when i was considering the actions available to them.

Especially with how the system works versatility is actually very easy to achieve, there's lots of feats within each class that allow you to be more effective in certain situations, a classic example being sudden charge, a feat that lets you stride twice and then strike using only 2 actions rather than 3, or friendly toss that i mentioned above. And outside of your class, since you HAVE to spread your ability scores at least a lil bit youll probably be good with at least one ability score that a different class focuses on. With the fact that feats are usually not direct power boosts it isnt as big of a deal to give certain feats for free or to use rules such as free archetype or ancestral paragon.

Now there's a lot to praise about pf2 and i could keep going about it like how encounter rating actually works, or all the sickass options available, or how it has so much LGBT representation including a deity that presents itself to mortals wearing their ideal body because "if a divine being has chosen to wear it, it must be perfect", but I think I've praised pf2 enough. Despite all the good pf2 is still not a perfect system and it has its flaws, some that should be mentioned even if I myself dont find them to be bothersome.

To start it should be mentioned that pf2 is pretty dense, it's a fairly crunchy system with a large amount of rules for a lot of different situations, which can make it a little difficult to approach but the main difficulty is really that a lot of the times rules reference other rules which can be clunky if you don't learn a good amount of rules before playing, i know a few DMs that like to come up with rules on the fly to fill in gaps or when they don't know the rules, and pf2 doesnt quite work well with that method as several rules have implications for other rules. At least tho most rules are one google search away thanks to them being free.

Another somewhat related issue is that pf2 can be overwhelming, it's not as bad as pf1 or d&d 3.5 however there is such a high amount of options that analysis paralysis is certainly an issue for some people.

Now these were issues that i dont really care about myself, i can work with a dense system and i love having tons of options, however pf2 isnt a perfect system for me either.

It's hard to find gripes with it but I do have a few, for instance while i love the trait system i do think it is unintuitive how so many traits are just tags with no effect on their own while so many others have extremely important effects like the flourish trait that means you can't use other flourishes that turn or the incapacitation trait that heavily holds back save or suck abilities by making them less effective on higher level targets, yet there is no differentiation between the two, you just need to always look at the tags, after a while it's not that big of an issue but still.

For this next one i wanna give a lil bit of context, d&d 5e has a rather large issue that all its players are aware of, the martial/caster disparity, as in 5e casters are just overwhelmingly better than martials, well pf2 fixed this, but went just ever so slightly overboard. In pf2 generally speaking martials have a few things they are good at and are REALLY good at them, usually hitting things hard, while casters are weaker but more versatile, there's exceptions like the kineticist which is mechanically similar to casters as its abilities mimic spells but is functionally closer to a martial as it is highly effective at few specific things, but exceptions aside this vaguely how they're functionally divided.

The problem is that because casters are both tied to resources and also slightly weaker there's time where it doesn't feel that great to play them, mainly with the fact that you also don't really get any items to increase your effectiveness, you get items like staves or wands that give you more versatility but nothing like a +1 potency rune that martials get to hit more often, and with the high defenses that enemies tend to have at your level or even a level lower it can be hard to break that first spell and apply a good debuff to get better odds with other spells, and unfortunately even tho pf2 added multiple levels of success to still have something happen when enemies succeed on spells it's still often negligible and doesn't feel good to expend resources like that especially cus you don't get a lot of them at low levels. Overall tho I do not think this is a terrible issue, there are ways to build around it like teamwork focusing on reliable options that lower defenses, and even without this i think a potency item to buff spellcasters like martials is enough.

Now, that's actually pretty much it for the issues I've got with pf2, but I'm not quite done yet, I think pf2 is an extremely solid system and the flavor of the available options is also fantastic, it has few flaws, however I have more issues with it, but they aren't really pf2 issues as much as they are issues with most d20 systems.

The first issue is not exactly an issue with the system itself but it is commonly found in d20 systems, and that's the null result, which is when you wanna do something, you roll poorly and nothing happens, you waited the whole round to do your cool thing but the math rock stopped on a 1 so that's that. Now pf2 is actually not as bad as some of its peers at this (lookin at you 5e), thanks to the 4 degrees of success, which I realize now is a good system pf2 uses that I haven't explained, thankfully it's very simple, whenever you roll there's a difficulty class you need to beat, like to shield yourself from the fireball you need to roll a 17 or higher, in 5e there's only 2 degrees, you either do it or you don't, in pf2 there's 4, you can succeed, fail, crit succeed or crit fail, and the crit results have two ways to happen, you roll 10 above or below the DC or you roll a nat 20 or nat 1 which increase or decrease the degree of success by one step (this is important! a farmer cannot hit an ancient red dragon because a nat 20 will turn a crit fail into a fail which is still a miss). With this system and the 3 action system it is less likely to do nothing in a turn, it is however still very possible, especially because on attack rolls you still miss on a failure not just a critical failure, the difference is that some and pcs have abilities that do something when they are crit missed.

As a DM i almost always consider lowering the defenses of my monsters and increasing the hp so that the players get to do cool stuff more often... and then the die rears it's face on an ugly little single digit number that says fuck you that we lovingly call a nat 1. Nat 1s are rolled shockingly often at the tables i play at and lowering defenses of enemies won't fix the frustration of seeing that number and saying "well, that's that".

The next issue then has to do with the actual dice, it's something that has become obvious as ive been thinking about it and especially playing pf2 as well as baldur's gate 3 (which while it isn't a ttrpg it uses the 5e core rules and boy does if highlight some big issues with those rules), and that is the swinginess of the numbers, having a result that is twenty times as likely as another result but just as likely is kind of crazy, but really that is especially apparent when we look at the damage dice, bg3 likes to show you numbers rather than dice and seeing the damage of a fireball be 6 to 36 damage really puts it into perspective, it's worse at higher levels because you have other spells like blight that deal 8 to 64 damage, and while average results are more likely because of the higher amounts of dice that swinginess is still there. In pf2 this is even more apparent actually because of the more frequent and actually wildly more meaningful crits, because while in 5e crits just double damage dice, in pf2 crits double damage period, including all modifiers which there is a lot more of, and crits often have special effects too. In a recent one shot I was playing a kineticist and I used an ability to target two enemies, they get to make a basic save (no dmg on crit success, half on success, full on fail and double on crit fail) the damage was 2d8, the first turn i used it i rolled a 3 and a 2, one of my enemies crit succeeded ans the other succeeded so I dealt a total of 2 damage, the very next turn i do it again, both fail and one of em is a crit fail, and I rolled a 7 and an 8, dealing a total of 45 damage. In another game we play our barbarian is using a giant scythe and regularly hits for like 15 or so damage and the crits for 40-50 damage because scythes deal more damage on crits.

While critting feels fantastic, both on hitting and enemies crit failing, it is extremely swingy and gives an overwhelming amount of power to let the dice decide how an encounter goes, this may be supposed to be a moderate encounter but your barbarian went first and immediately crit a core enemy of the formation and now its a trivial encounter, or the zombie went first and crit the healer and downed them immediately and now it's a severe encounter. Maybe this was supposed to be trivial but I keep rolling 15s and up and my players look like they're rolling on d6s to hit. The swinginess also links back to the null result because sure the different degrees of success help but a crit success on a save is still a null result and a success dealing 2 damage is more like a slap on the back of the head than a consolation prize. And while the null result is something that's maybe fixable the swinginess is something that I think requires too much effort to change for how pf2 is built, crits are just too infused in the system to change them and everything just messes with the math that is core to pf2 making it so much harder to balance everything.

While I think I can live with both of these issues the more time goes on the more I wanna do something about them. And that's roughly when a new ttrpg in the making caught my eye. I've been following Matthew Colville for a long time, he's a great DM and makes wonderful videos with system agnostic tips on how to be a better dungeon master, he's also a game designer and the game design director at MCDM, and since the d&d OGL debacle they've decided to take a crack at making their own unique ttrpg, and well im hooked, he's made several videos on the MCDM YouTube channel explaining more in detail and some of what I've said is in reference to that, watching those videos has allowed me to put into words the issues I've been having, namely the null result. I'm excited to see what they've put together, and so finally that is why I phrased the answer at the beginning like that, pf2 is currently my favorite ttrpg but with the MCDM ttrpg on the way that is prone to change. I think I will always love pf2, it is an extremely solid system and making homebrew for it really feels like making a neat cog to add to a well oiled machine. I could probably go on about pf2 especially if I were to get into the specific options available (don't get me started on the kineticist, I am in love).

So that's it then, I hope it was worth 2 fucking whole weeks of wait.

[crikey01]

i keep being asked what i'm smiling at on my phone like i'm some smitten little teenage girl with a crush

my dudes i'm just smiling at these gay old men

[legendoftherisingtide]

it has occurred to me that there hasn’t been a kiss in the entirety of the bnha series.

now can you imagine,, if the only one in the entire series,,, is a gay one.

[koszmarnybudyn]

The kids will some day be fine.

Cw. Blood on the second picture:

[fangswbenefits]

Yeah.

I've definitely fallen in love....

[aiura-stan]

yeah if u think of the main cast as a neurodivergent bunch of kids who become friends because they’re drawn to saiki it totally makes sense. He’s a neurodivergent person who simultaneously fakes being normal perfectly and also doesn’t hide it at all

the ~ideal~ neurodivergent. lol. everyone can tell, and also no one cares and he isn’t judged for being weird. People get the strangest sense that there’s more than meets the eye when it comes to saiki. other ND kids get that sensation twofold and find themselves inexplicably drawn to him.

he can and has literally rewritten reality so he appears less weird. and it isn’t always a good thing… but that’s discussion for another day I guess

[plantwriting]

Rolan didn’t realize he loved the other two until it was too late. Until it had been years since they’d spoken, even longer since they’d seen each other. And when he realized, he didn’t know what to do. How to deal with the fact that he loved two people he could barely even say he knew anymore. He didn’t understand how he could love concepts, memories filled with laughter and affection and the always somewhat present smell of smoke.

But he did. He loved them. Felt his heart skip a beat when a girlfriend’s dyed blonde hair momentarily made him mistake her for Kian. His body warmed up when she spoke of a fantasy story she’d read, explaining all the little details that Rolan would remember for the rest of his life in the same exact way that Rand would. When he heard a song on the radio, and his first thought was still “Kian would like this”. When the smell of smoke and alcohol and weed that always clung to Rand’s attic bedroom never quite left him.

Kian knew he loved the other too far too early, before anything could be done about it. When their biggest worries were still exams rather than missing sisters or corpses that nobody else could see. And he hated himself for it, hated how quickly and easily his love turned from something acceptable into something they’d hate him for. Hated how no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t get rid of the love he felt for them, how each time he hugged or just sat near them it would feel forbidden, like a secret they all had to keep but only he knew about.

But he couldn’t stop the way he felt. How his heart hammered in his chest when Rand rested his head on his shoulder because it was still normal to him. How his body burned when Rolan helped him bleach his hair during the early hours of the morning, talking about everything and anything to pass the time while they waited. How he mourned the friendship he still had with Rand, now tainted with lies because that was the only way Rand could still care for him. How he still felt such a desperate need and pain when yet another call to Rolan went unanswered, his words and pleas falling to nothing as he knew the other would never hear them anyways.

Rand only understood that he loved them when they were gone. He realized with fear and pain and yerning that the betrayal and loneliness he felt when they left wasn’t born just from his best friends leaving him behind. And he didn’t know how to feel, how to deal with it. Just like he didn’t years later, when he was left behind again, both of them gone somewhere he couldn’t bring himself to follow, only remembering how he felt when Rolan Deep and Kian Stone were both nothing but memories a few people held and empty graves he left flowers to.

He loved them for the rest of his life. His heart still skipped a beat whenever he passed by Rolan’s home, like he was still expecting the other to sneak out of the back door and join him in whatever he was doing. His body always felt cold and hollow, like something was missing, whenever someone touched him with the same care and gentleness that Kian always had. He locked up in terror whenever he heard the clicking and buzzing of ordinary bugs that had seemingly overtaken Galloway since the hive died. He screamed when the phantom flesh and blood that forever coated his barely living body wrapped around him tighter in a mockery of an embrace.

Rand loved the other two for the rest of his life. And he hated it more than anything.

[larabar]

finally finished another sketchbook good riddance🎉

[aspennntree]

since we only see the fucking. what do i call it. this thing.

when theyre alone do we think oscar has told the others about these weird merge episodes? because it doesnt seem like they know...

[weathernerdmando]

Oh! My friend @sarcasticspiderman nabbed this for me today while I had to run to my volunteer track (thank you again!!!).

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Outdrawn

f/f contemporary romance

two cartoonist who’ve been rivals since uni, and now have competing webcomics online, have to work together on the relaunch of a cult classic at the comic press they both work at

they both struggle with art-related physical and mental health issues, and complicated families

[unopenablebox]

unfortunately my experience is that it's very easy and straightforward to say things like "i'm feeling stressed out right now and having a harder time than usual not sounding irritable, sorry about that". and also that it's pretty easy to connect your current emotional state to the various specific life events and physical discomforts that caused it, even if these causes are not the exact thing that happens to be going on in front of you right this second that an unrelated person is doing. and what's more you can use that knowledge to make deliberate choices to only act on that emotion as it relates to its actual cause or at least doesn't harm random people nearby to no particular end

all this makes me more or less incapable of sympathizing with anyone who has yelled at me ever

[moiraimyths]

Before we call anon rude because let’s see it from their perspective, imagine getting an entire feast to eat. That can be pretty hard to start with so much that’s going on, but if they start with one thing they know they’ll like (aka one character they like) that can be the start for them leaping to other characters to finish the story and the bigger story. I struggle the same way to start book series if I don’t have at least one character that drives me to read it, it’s all about what can be the hook to push them through. Sounds like the anon is neurodivergent (just a guess) so they might genuinely not see it as rude and see it as a solution to even play the game to start with.

Btw absolutely adore the game, the complex and rich characters making them all so unique is amazing. The art is so pleasing to the eyes I love it!! I’m waiting for it all to get out at once so I don’t get too impatient. Shae however interests me the most, which routes will have the most lore for them? Will there be routes that give more lore in general based on decisions you make or do they all share the same amount? (I mean general lore not just Shae lore)

Apologies; we are not trying to accuse any asker of being rude! We are simply explaining our perspective as the developers / are trying to broadly encourage folks to dip their toes into other areas of the story outside of the main route(s) they're interested in, especially considering some routes will be made available sooner than others, and these other routes will likely contain additional scenes/lore of everyone's fave(s) regardless! We want to give each main cast member an equal amount of love (and lore) regardless of their overall popularity, so our goal is not to tut-tut anyone for having strong preferences for one character over the others, but rather to explain that you may be surprised by how much *more* you learn about your preferred characters in the other routes. That's all!

For Shae... Well, they were a foot soldier for one of the worst periods of the War. Lore wise, any other story that touches on the War will likely have content relevant to them and their experiences. ^^

[me-sploh-rada-imas]

[x]

[larrythefloridaman]

WOAH, HE'S BIGENDER? I DIDN'T KNOW THAT!

[theygender]

Finding out that "cat scratch fever" is a real thing and not just a metaphor in a song while googling why I've got muscle/joint pain radiating from my shoulder to my fingers after getting scratched and bit a lot by my new kitten and then realizing that my lymph node is swollen