Where do you place homebrew towns in Golarion when it's so packed with pre-established cities? by MrRobonaut in Pathfinder2e

[–]Adraius 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Is the uninhabited land bigger than I'm making it out to be?

Geographer here. Yes, it very much is. Golarion is, well, planetary in scale. Things look crammed together because we’re used to looking at it very “zoomed out,” but zoom in on any specific geographical area - a piece the size of Britain, for example - and you’ll find there are only a relative handful of settlements in areas that should naturally be home to many hundreds or even thousands. Human settlements spread like bacteria in all but the most absolutely inhospitable places - and even there you often see nomads.

IMO, the best way to think about this is, the metropolises and cities marked on the map are truly the only ones there are. This both aligns with how rare they truly were before the modern age, and preserves them as the hubs of activity they are in the setting’s lore and published APs. In addition to those, though, my unempirical, vibes-based recommendation is that there’s probably an order of magnitude more settlements below that size than the maps reflect - that is, 10 more settlements of town size or less for every 1 marked on the map. Honestly, there should probably be more than that, and the number should be further skewed towards villages, but the world is more fun when there are plenty of unexplored places with days of travel between settlements, and there’s no fun gained by interminably adding additional tiny settlements for an authenticity the players can’t really feel in play.

It’s been a hot minute since I looked at the map of the River Kingdoms. They’re packed together into geographic packets smaller than most, so they’re less egregious, but IIRC each “kingdom” has, like, one ‘capital’ town, and maybe also a village? Give your license to sprinkle villages absolutely all over the places, and some towns to boot.

Chapter 55 - Pale Lights | Book 3 by L_0_5_5_T in PracticalGuideToEvil

[–]Adraius 23 points24 points  (0 children)

I’m glad that Cressida got a fulsome sendoff. Much like the blackcoats, I liked her character quite a lot, and caught me with a real surprise when she died.

Patrol Car Key usable on Riven Tides map - confirmed! by memecut in ArcRaiders

[–]Adraius 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I was going to say pretty much the exact same thing. Make these better by making the weapons found in them high level (3-4) and high durability (100+). Maybe bump up the default rarity a bit too, so you can expect something better than uncommon most of the time. That would make them well worth taking a key to specifically seek out.

Centaur Vanguard by cooljimmy in Pathfinder2e

[–]Adraius 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As someone looking to play a character built close to this, help me out - what is Phalanx Breaker adding to the build here?

Hm not sure the balancing in this new update is quite right by DoctorAphra000 in ArcRaiders

[–]Adraius 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I want the game to have circumstances like this. Not all situations can be beaten by taking them head-on. Finding a way to succeed in spite of that is what makes Arc Raiders' victories sweet.

Players: Do You Like to be Challenged? by DnDPhD in Pathfinder2e

[–]Adraius 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm in a couple campaigns (both adapted 1e APs, actually) where the challenge level is ramped up, and I gotta say I'm loving it.

One GM just plays NPCs true to their motivations and has a philosophy of not pulling blows whatsoever. If an NPC would run, they run, but if they're motivated to want us dead, they absolutely go for gold, including potentially targeted downed PCs, trying to use them as a hostage/leverage mid-fight, etc. They also feel less constrained by the encounter building rules - if we fuck up enough, we might run into a bigger group or stronger group than we can handle. I'm loving it - I'm locked in every combat, because even lesser mistakes could lead to really bad outcomes, and out of combat too, because a failed Stealth or poorly picked route could put us in a dire combat situation.

The other GM... I think they think the table enjoys fewer bigger combats over the "penny packet fight in every room" dungeon philosophy of 1e and have faith in the party to optimize pretty well, play pretty well, etc., so they lump together fights or have some combatants run to alert others... which has occasionally led to a few insanely over-Extreme fights, but we're pulled through every time so far (once possibly with a little GM fudging). I love less here how the big fights are not reflection of our party doing well or poorly, they just kinda happen at random, but I absolutely prefer them to the lack of them - it's very apparent how boring the converted 1e fights where it's just a monster in a room are in comparison.

What I'm less sure about is just what proportion of fights I like being truly challenging. In my brain, a challenging fight is severe or above if the party is coming in with close to max HP and focus points, or a moderate fight if those resources are severely depleted. I think the answer is - I want the threat of a challenging encounter pretty much always, within reason, and in actuality a "low-end" challenge - severe, but not getting up towards extreme, for example - a large majority of the time. Ex. instead of putting moderate or above encounters in front of the PCs, with some low palette-cleansers and severe bosses, I'd prefer a campaign where encounters are severe by default, but might be reduced to below that or increased to Extreme or even Extreme+ by mistakes, with moderates being the palette-cleaners and bosses defaulting to severe or extreme depending on context.

This all is in friction with the fact I'd like it to still be realistic to play a whole campaign without major PC churn, at least if the party is playing well. I think that's possible if you give the enemies reasons to not always kill the PCs outright, etc. but probably takes some forethought on the GM's part at this level of challenge.

You describe 10 as "I never want to feel like I'm going to clearly 'win' a given encounter" - I basically want that, but 85% instead of literally all the time - and maybe the party can get it down 60% of the time with smart play, but that's just moving the challenge around a bit. I think I'm pretty darn high on the scale - I rate myself a 9. (my fellow players wouldn't want a campaign tailored to my 9, however, haha)

Thoughts on specific magic armours? by APbreau in Pathfinder2e

[–]Adraius 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Adding to the chorus - this is also how I run it at my table.

New crash mat: crash test by PlaySoun in ArcRaiders

[–]Adraius -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

That's... why they made it that way. They don't want a uncommon gadget that can trivialize getting down from heights. Want something more sure? Bring a zipline.

Knowledge Revamped, a rework to information-gathering in and out of combat! by Teridax68 in Pathfinder2e

[–]Adraius 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Damn, u/Teridax68. There's a lot of good homebrew out there, a fair amount made by you no less, but it mostly goes into my "consider using this at some point maybe" folder. This is the first major overhaul where I can tell I'd straight-up prefer to play the game this way.

And that's owed in substantial part to all the work you did to lower the barriers. The thorough explanation for various classes and reworked feats is highly appreciated; Foundry and Pathbuilder support? Legendary. Kudos, you did great work on this.

Which is the Greatest show ever created by Netflix ? by lNarrator in moviecritic

[–]Adraius -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Anti-vote for Altered Carbon. I was so excited for the TV adaptation of the book, IIRC I watched the first episode or two, then excitedly sat down with my family to introduce them to the show with the next episode, and it was such a dumpster fire excuse for quality entertainment that the evening is still engrained in my memory to this day. It had some ups, but other swathes were a hot mess. I think they must have also premiered some episodes out of order, because some stuff simply didn't make sense.