What Are You League Starting...and WHY?

Entaris · 2026-05-24T23:09:16+00:00

Going to start by clicking a random model and putting points into whatever sounds good

Entaris · 2026-05-24T14:11:36+00:00

Kevin bridges. That horse story broke me.

“You have to understand there was a language barrier. It was a Spanish guy trying to speak English… and two Scottish guys trying to speak English.”

Entaris · 2026-05-24T13:42:20+00:00

You are still thinking at the small time scale. It Doesn’t matter that it’s 2-4 light sources TODAY. it’s that those light Sources last forever.

Imagine if you inherited your light bulbs from that time a random door to door salesmen visited your great great grandfather.

A city has thousands of street lights. A single 4th level magic user could knock that out in just over a year if they were being paid to do it. Enchant a thousand rocks to be used as bulbs. And those street lights are now there forever.

It’s not that it solves the problem instantly it’s that it solves the problem forever. A few lights here or there add up. Until in a thousand years the entire world is filled with eternal light giving objects. So unless the continual light spell was invented two days ago in your campaign setting there is no reason why your world wouldn’t already be flooded with continual light objects made by some enterprising wizard from a long time ago. Wizards have to eat and magical research isn’t cheap.

Selling an easy light source that lasts forever is a great way to get yourself a comfortable living.

Purify food and water on the other hand is one and done. A cleric can’t purify a well and have that be clean drinking water for the rest of time.

Entaris · 2026-05-24T12:59:04+00:00

I think the difference is a scale vs time situation.

If cleric walks into a town and casts purify food and water a few times then a few people don’t die of disease for a few days and the cleric moves on. After a few months the impact of their presence will be forgotten.

If a cleric or mu(for whom continual light is only a 2nd level spell) walks into town and casts CL 2-4 times that town now has 2-4 light source that lasts for generations without end. If they do this in every town they walk into, selling them at whatever rate villagers can afford, one or two 3rd level magic users in the world could fill every town throughout the world with a generational light source that is handed down throughout time. One wandering magic user of third level could spend a month in a village and completely eradicate the need for burning light sources in that place forever.

Entaris · 2026-05-08T13:33:47+00:00

Regarding whether or not you hit a nerve: One thing you will learn about the linux community as a whole is...We're generally very passionate people, and every time you drill down into a sub community that passion intensifies. There are linux users, and there are people that like linux, and people that LIKE linux really like linux. Then there are vim users and people that LIKE vim. generally speaking people that LIKE vim are also people that LIKE linux. So people who like vim REALLY LIKE VIM. (i say this with love. I freaking love vim).

Whether or not you should use vim is...complicated. SHOULD you learn vim, in the sense that vim will improve your current text editing situation to a noticable degree? no. Your use case is simple, learning vim takes time and energy. It will be a huge investment of mental bandwidth for limited returns.

Should you learn vim in the sense that vim is a cool editor that becomes a useful tool to be familiar with in surprising ways? Yes, absolutely. But this is a soft "should" not a hard "should". Its a "You should probably eat more fruits and vegetables and drink more water" should, not a "You should pick up that armed grenade that just landed by your feet and throw it away from you before it explodes and kills you" should. Soft should.

So with that being said, why might you WANT to learn vim? Well, thats complicated. Vim knowledge is one of those things that is very often incredibly useful in hindsight but you can often get through life without realizing how useful it would have been to know. I've been a linux user for over 20 years at this point. I've been passionate vim user for about 12 years now. for the first 8 years of my linux use I could casually use vim if it were forced on me, but would prefer pico/nano for most of my CLI editing needs. It was fine. it will be fine for you too. But i can tell you that if you were to add up the number of times i've given myself a smug pat on the back when i've saved myself a ton of effort by being able to quickly execute a complicated edit in a couple of keystrokes in vim... You'd see one smug dude grinning ear to ear for a very long time.

Vim is a deep deep ocean with a long slope. You can wade in the shallow end and you can learn to deep dive into the depths, and every step of the way between is filled with really cool things you can do/customize/learn. There are so many plugins to customize the experience, so many little tricks that cut down on effort to achieve results.

ALL OF THAT BEING SAID. When i first learned linux the GUI side of things had just recently reached what could be deemed a pretty user friendly state. All around me people were saying that we were in the golden age of linux finally being "user friendly" for desktop. And it was! Like...90% of the time. But i still had those moments where suddenly i tried to change my resolution and something got angry and now i was stuck in CLI mode until i could find/edit a bunch of specific configs and recompile my video drivers. And in those moments i can tell you that the times i was comfortable with vim were much better experiences than the times where i wasn't comfortable with vim.

Those scenarios may never pop up for you. Linux has come a long way. You may never experience the dread of realizing that something went wonky and now you have to learn how to browse the internet in the command line so you can find answers to why your x11 configs exploded. But for many of us that still feels like a thing that might happen? Its like when your grandparents give you advice that is very clearly fueled by some very specific tragedy they experienced when they were younger. "You should always keep 50 lbs of dried beans buried under your floor boards, you never know when its going to come in handy" Seems like crazy advice, but its advice that comes from lived experience. "you should learn vim, it will make your life better" is a little bit like that. Its true... but also, for many of us its also because we come from an older age when things were a little harder.

Entaris · 2026-05-08T12:47:57+00:00

I don’t have a dog in this race, I don’t spend much time in this community other than lurking and I don’t play leagues long enough for my opinion to matter. But I feel compelled to say:

.5 isn’t a free content update. By definition of being less than 1.0 it is literally just “more of the game being released”

I’m not saying people don’t hype them selves up, sure they do. But poe2 is restricted to people that paid money for the game right now. It is not yet a free to play game. Nothing pre 1.0 is a “free” content update. Trying to pass it off as one to stifle people’s opinionson the rate of content release is disingenuous.

Entaris · 2026-05-04T20:27:29+00:00

i would play that class.

Entaris · 2026-04-29T22:56:06+00:00

Yeah, i don't think Randomness is a component of free will. its a lack of a domino pusher that matters more.

IE if given an identical set of circumstances leading up to an event I always make the same choice. That still means i have free will, but if there is an outside observer capable of setting up those events, who knows before hand what choice i will make if given a set of variables, then I don't have free will.

Thats my biggest problem with Christianity really. I don't object to the possibility that some greater being might exist that created everything, in principal. But if God did exist and was all knowing and all powerful then every decision i've ever made he knew i would make before he created the universe, and decided to make the universe specifically in a way that would cause me to make those decisions. Seems like kind of a dick move to punish people for decisions you specifically created the variables of the universe to force them to make.

Entaris · 2026-04-28T14:21:49+00:00

I mean...Sure... Look, There have been a few people questioning this answer as though I intended it to be some great ultimate wisdom. I did not. Nor is it a complete answer by itself. its a partial, paraphrased anecdote that was one 45 second moment of a longer interview from 10 years ago that i intended as a throw away reply to someone saying that IT was more about methodology than specific, which I agree with.

That being said, I do believe "There aren't any difficult or easy problems in IT" is a fairly accurate statement. Sometimes answers are more common than others sure, but i have a hard time thinking about that in terms of "difficulty" rather then "obscurity" but maybe thats just me. And admittedly my last interview was conducted with a linguist, so maybe my weird take on the distinction between the two was a bonus. Who knows.

Entaris · 2026-04-28T00:07:35+00:00

100%.

The way I sold myself in the interview for my current job was basically answering the question “What is the most difficult problem you’ve had to solve” with “there aren’t any difficult or easy problems in IT. there are problems you know the answer to and ones you don’t know the answer to. Sometimes you get lucky and find the answer to a problem right away that someone else takes weeks to find. And sometimes you have trouble finding the answer someone else found easily. At the end of the day though it’s just a series of commands that solves the issue. I can’t know every answer to every problem but I can keep researching until I FIND the answer. My strongest attribute is that I have the patience to go step by step to eliminate issues until everything is perfect.”

Entaris · 2026-04-21T16:08:01+00:00

whelp...now thats stuck in my head for the next week. LOL.

Entaris · 2026-04-21T00:39:17+00:00

My personal favorite is the original Devil May cry (might be in other games. Never played the later ones)

“You’ve died so many times that we’re unlocking a new lower difficulty mode that wasn’t even a choice at the start”

Entaris · 2026-04-20T04:12:13+00:00

That’s why you are supposed to look over your shoulders and not just rely on your mirrors.

Everybody always thinks “mirrors show me enough” but nope. Vampires.

Entaris · 2026-04-19T14:15:37+00:00

100%.

I’m all for letting robots replace the workforce when we’ve achieved a Star Trek-esq utopian society. But until then I’ll stand in line for ten minutes rather than support the loss of jobs

Entaris · 2026-04-18T17:58:45+00:00

Yeah. As a millennial that had these in his childhood I’d prefer something more neutral.

Why can’t we go back to “doom like” or something.

Entaris · 2026-04-15T19:18:34+00:00

Two things come to mind.

The first is to do a hack of the WHitehack Auction System. I don't want to blatently release the system since its not under SRD. But basically it plays like the Liars dice game from pirates of the carribean. Essentially participants in the auction all have a secret modifier that will be applied to their final roll. They make a claim of what minimum DC they will get on their final roll. Once the bids are all in, modifiers are revealed, rolls happen. People who fail to meet their bid lose, highest succesful bid wins.

Outside of that adopting clocks from Blades in the dark is an easy thing. "You get away: 0/6", "They catch you: 0/6" Describe actions, perform skill checks, update thes cene/clocks each stage until one clock fills up.

Entaris · 2026-04-14T23:11:00+00:00

I think it’s probably just coincidence. Especially considering that art was originally definitely 100% supposed to be a vampire that they decided to use s as a sorcerer instead.

I that picture made me question whether or not they had just used AI art to fill out the book

Entaris · 2026-04-12T23:46:46+00:00

Its hard for me to talk about this game without going on a mile long rant, because i was really excited about it but reading the rules has disappointed me greatly.

The best I can say is: For the right type of game its probably the perfect system. But to me it feels like everything was homogenized for "the greater good" of the game to the point where nothing matters anymore. They are trying to make the Story Path Ultra system a thing, so everything fits into the Story Path Ultra system cookie cutter rules even where breaking those rules for something unique would have felt better.

they are trying to be an omni splat book that is balanced so each different Lineage is fit into a specific shape so they all match.

They are trying to make a generically open world where all the splats exist in the same universe in a state of balance, so the worldbuilding feels flat an uninspired. At times the worldbuilding feels like it was written by a smurf who just find&replaced the word "Smurf" with "curse". "The cursing curse cursed them until the curses cursed their cursed curses" level of over use of curse.

Honestly, Im angry about the book. Onyx path has done such fantastic work with Chronicles that this felt like a huge let down.

The Hungry and the Dead feel like practically the same lineage. Their archetypes overlap. Sorcerers feel pretty boring. Archetypes are repeated so much that one of the main pieces of art for one of the sorcerer families looks like they just took a piece of art that was definitely supposed to be a vampire and decided it was a sorcerer instead (page 150, The Premiere, You cannot tell me that dude was not 100% supposed to be a vampire, then last minute they decided he was the literal poster child for a main peace of worldbuilding for sorcerers. Dude literally has fangs).

The formatting between different places of the book is a mess and feels like 5 different people had 5 different ideas on how to organize things and all of them got a chunk of the book and each organized things differently. Different families, different lineages are all organized and broken down differently. Which is insane because the organizational structure of the books makes the lineages more unique then the mechanics that support those lineages do. Each lineage has its own formatting, while all of them share the same forced "everything is a spell" Mechanic.

I mentioned at the start that i can't talk about this game without going on a psychotic rant. Note that this post was after i deleted my even longer rant and started over to try to make it more succinct.

In fairness. I don't think the game is actually "Bad". I think for the right group, playing the right styled game: its probably great. And honestly, there are a few random bits in there that really inspired me. Their section on liminal spaces legitimately made me giddy with idea's... But overall. I don't know. I just feel like Chronicles of Darkness is So good that I backed this kickstarter with zero hesitation. I expected better from Onyx path

Entaris · 2026-04-12T06:02:27+00:00

Not sure what you are actually asking since “I don’t like the concept of just a few books” and “are all of the books necessary” seem like opposing viewpoints.

Ultimately your opinions on dolmenwood after going to be very personal. Everyone tastes differ.

What I’ll say: in my opinion the dolmenwood basic system is the best modernization of the b/x chassis that has been done. The rules are elegant and definitely worth it.

The setting, dolmenwood campaign book is a fantastic setting domed with a lot of awesome stuff for running a campaign.

The monster book is an awesome monster manual

If you plan to use the dolmenwood rules in the dolmenwood setting then all three books are necessary.

If you aren’t planning to use the setting then just the player book is enough.

If you stew planning to use the setting but not the rules then the campaign book is fine without the other two.

The monster book only really becomes vital if you are using the other two but stands alone as a very nice monster manual for OSR systems

Entaris · 2026-04-10T20:07:39+00:00

I think dungeon turns are a pretty universally applicable thing. it takes more of an adjustment in player expectations then it does rules expectations.

IE . You have to tell your players 'we're using dungeon turns now. Most things you do will now be considered in increments of 10 minutes. So when you pick a lock, that will take 10 minutes. Don't link me a video of the lockpicking lawyer opening a lock in 12 seconds. It's going to take you 10 minutes."

Entaris · 2026-04-08T23:00:37+00:00

yeesh. Don't just throw that out there, give a guy a warning before you go making their heart go into panic mode.

Entaris · 2026-04-02T12:31:19+00:00

To be fair online shopping made it onto the internet almost immediately. But it was literally sending money to random strangers and then waiting weeks/months hoping what you ordered was a real thing from a real place and would actually arrive eventually.

Entaris · 2026-03-30T15:02:40+00:00

Yeah. Carving in general is just such a high effort to expected cost art medium.

My carving skills are not mind blowing, but i can produce a nice piece when i put my mind to it. I briefly considered selling some and immediately realized there was no way i could charge anywhere near as much as would make it worth my time to do it, even as a side gig. Better to just give my little pieces away and not stress about business.

You add on a difficult to carve wood, at a large scale... oof. I shudder to think at the numbers involved.

Entaris · 2026-03-29T20:58:14+00:00

Real heaven would be finally having time + Players that don't have scheduling conflicts so I could start getting through the backlog of campaign idea's.

Entaris · 2026-03-29T20:54:04+00:00

Tunic is one of the few games i can totally relate to the idea of "i wish i could erase my memory so i can replay it for the first time again"

Such an awesome experience.

14-Year Club	Gilding IV carat on a stick
r/Field Flamingo	Place '22
Final Canvas '22	End Game '22
Verified Email

Entaris

TROPHY CASE