#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.

[ganondoodle]

(OC Lore and design time!)

(it got longer again ... sorry ... idk how to make things short, i just need to talk, but i guess if you can read the written stuff in the pic thats the barest bare bones of what i wrote here)

i was asked what new lore story stuff i had thought about that made me sad which i mentioned a bit ago, and while that is too hard to explain given all the missing context i thought i could at least talk about lore having to do with it :D

so, (Lord) Eadrya is one of my fav OCs (big blue lad, here a rough sketch in humanoid form) they are both one of if not THE most powerful demon alive and the most battle trained;

at the mid point of the story the demon world gets invaded by the celestials (the angel inspired things i talked about in the previous lore post with Xaror) and Shargon, as the king, should be their first and only frontline, but at this point his life is only being sustained by maschinery after being mortally wounded, he cannot fight (he realizes what is going on, rips himself off the maschinery to get at least his youngest child to safety, barely managing it before dying- the guardian, the demons god, takes over his body to attempt to fight against the celestials but cant keep itself alive long enough since its host is already dead) Eadrya takes the role of the frontline fighter (despite being very full of themselves and aggressive they care about their 'job' of protecting their own, also giving them the chance to show off just how strong they are); the fight was going well for them all things considered, but when the guardian activates it drains the power of all elemental lords (which Eadrya is one of, and since they have the most strength it also takes the most from them), so much so that they lose the fight and suffer deadly wounds (the worst being a spear through the chest made of a material that grows hard, root-like formations when in contact with demonic blood like a fungus but worse, also stopping any self healing processes) after the guardian falls apart it creates a huge shockwave of energy that stuns every living thing within a certain distance and possibly more-

Eadrya (in true demon form, so like a blue whale in size at least) was likely taken through an active gateway to the human world in a large tidal wave also created by the guardians fall; they wash up in the harbor of a small secluded village, the head of which is 'lady 13'; although never having seen a demon before and everyone being afraid (largely thinking its a strange hurt animal, only she suspected otherwise), they still gather all villagers to pull out the celestial spear, which is diffcult and brutal given that its already taken root, but the village lacked both knowledge and means to help any other way- doing so damaged their heart which is how they were able to collect samples of all three demonic blood types ('normal' -red like humans-, energy -essentially purely magic- and heartblood -highly concentrated energy only found within the heart of a demon and the only one to contain genetic material) (this is the start of Eadryas character arc, having to deal with the fact that their world is likely destroyed, them failing what they didnt think they could fail, having lost a battle so badly (even if not really their fault) for the first time and not knowing if literally anyone else has survived .. also being now stuck in the human world, which they dont like)

Lady 13 (placeholder name? stands for experiment 13) is a human that was tricked by demon hunters to enroll into a series of experiments trying to create hybrids of demons and humans, which they hoped would be powerful and easily controllable tools for their endeavours, though the two are inherently not compatible, they tried grafting body parts of demons on humans to make them compatible- all experiments failed except for her, more or less, though she never got to see the hybrid she carried and was then told it had died too, they threw her out believing she wouldnt survive much longer either and all such experiments were cancelled due to the high cost of human life, research material (demons are still rare) and upkeep with no successful results Lady 13 survived though (perhaps even via the pirates picking her up?) and she ended up living in said small village far away, hiding her half demonic body, though most know there soemthing 'wrong' with her (her being this tall when it doesnt fit the rest for one), only few know the full extent; she enjoys the life she has now, perhaps on the more poor side but safer and more loved than ever before; she largely lead the efforts to try and help Eadrya when they ended up in the harbor, though there wasnt that much anyone could do it was still enough- they leave immediately after waking up, but return after really having nowhere to go and struggling to deal with everything that has happened; over time (probably years) they start to open up towards the people there (though not .. very much) enough to get rather close with Lady 13 too- she actually falls madly in love but after Eadrya (extremely aro/ace) rejects all her attempts quite clearly she respects their boundaries

However, after hearing news of potential demon sightings Eadrya decides to leave in hopes of not being the last demon left after all; Lady 13 then decides to reveal her secret to them (though hearing and seeing what lengths hunters would go to for their experiments makes them absolutely seething with rage- she insists on not being out for revenge) and asks if they would be willing to donate a small amount of heartblood; shes always wanted to be a mother but is now incompatible with humans too- through things she picked up back at the experiments facillity, hers and her doctors research she is sure that is all that is needed, she dares to ask since she does not know when, if ever, she will meet another demon, much less one she could actually trust enough for this though Eadrya hesitates (why would she want to go through the same thing again that didnt work and threatened her life, if it does work, do they want to be involved with any of this? what if hunters find out it worked after all?) but after her ensuring that they would have no part in it other than giving up a little blood and would not be considered a parent in any way, nor made responsible for anything that might happen to her, but considering it all in the end they agree to it

only for her to reveal shes had a small bottle of it already, along with multiple samples of the other types, which she collected when Eadrya was bleeding out into the harbor not knowing if they will survive, though not wanting to make use of it without their consent either way (they are actuallly rather touched by this)

alot later the main group returns here and it turns out to have worked (though she is unable to walk/bedridden for a long while bc it did alot of damage to her body, which can heal since its demons parts, but only really slowly bc she does not have a full functioning system and no demonic blood of her own -she uses the other samples for the healing process-) though its a little awkward to explain, especially considering that 13.1 took alot after Eadrya xD (their theory as to why it worked so "well" that time is that even though the sample was already taken, them giving their consent for it still made it less likely to be rejected; demons dont need partners to have offspring, and all can do it, they just have to decide to- so them agreeing to it, even though its long been outside their body, still had an effect on the blood sample)

[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

[rockpaperscissuhs]

HISPANIC HERITAGE MONTH + BAND OF BROTHERS:

JOSEPH "JOE" RAMIREZ

Born October 5th, 1921, in Nebraska

Died April 8th, 1988 (age 66), in Martinez, California

Joe Ramirez enlisted in September 1942 (age 20) in San Francisco, CA, and he trained with Easy Company at Toccoa. Holding the rank of Private, he served in Normandy, Holland, and Bastogne. He was hospitalized in January 1945, and discharged in July 1945. After the war, he was married for many years, and had children and grandchildren. When he passed away he was buried with his wife, who had passed away 11 years earlier. Further information about him is scarce, but the brief character profile in the Band of Brothers series bible describes him as Mexican-American, and his personality as "sensitive and nervous."

Appears in Episodes 1, 3-8, and 10; portrayed by actor Rene L. Moreno

Sources below

A million thanks to @bleedingcoffee42 for tracking down this info for me!

[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:

[lostyesterday]

[vaguely-concerned]

I've been picking mostly only the essential flirt options with lucanis in the romance so far (I've personally found the dynamic much more natural and mutual when you do that, more like forming a solid friendship slowly and inevitably becoming something else and less like you keep pushing on him and getting little back b/c he seemingly just gets overwhelmed and goes into freeze instead), and I think rye is a pretty hard person to read at the best of times even though he's been Down Real Bad from pretty early on and their chemistry as people is naturally really good. so the way the almost-kiss plays out in this playthrough feels a lot like it has the added layer of lucanis realizing that no but for sure rook is flirting and not just being kind or a good friend* it IS actually happening it's not just wishful/fearful thinking!!! and then uh. maybe going a bit too hard a bit too fast in all the excitement at that revelation haha

*in lucanis' defense he has seemingly literally never had a friend who wasn't his cousin-brother before, under those circumstances I suppose some confusion is extremely natural if not outright expected lmao

[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

[worstloki]

loki self harm scars is OUT thor showing off his clean arms is IN

[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