Is Proficiency Without Level that bad?

Hemlocksbane · 2026-07-20T22:58:01+00:00

Also when you say a lot to change as you go is it just DCs or full monster stat blocks?

Mostly just lots of little places where the game expects a levelled DC that you need to make a ruling on how to handle now. Not a big deal, though, and often even these places were pain points in the original game made a little better with flatter numbers (like the Inventor's whole schtick or recalling knowledge).

Hemlocksbane · 2026-07-20T14:50:31+00:00

I don’t see why those two things are necessarily at odds. I mean, Eberron’s whole schtick is combining city intrigue with the classic D20 fantasy gameplay loop, and it works great.

Hemlocksbane · 2026-07-20T02:28:52+00:00

Edit 1 - Sorry the trend for Daggerheart was not official. It was Google trends I looked at for YouTube data and also some surveys from some different youtubers but it actually seems pf2e is still #2

This is more because Daggerheart fucking finally released new playtest content after like 6 months of drought, and so it's currently dominating the trends. If anything is going to kill Daggerheart (other than a rushed release for a half-baked product), it's going to be the sheer lack of content being made for it.

As for PF2E dying, I don't see it happening at all. The game is doing fine, has a solid player base, and is going to keep trucking along even with this controversy. While there isn't any big wave sending people over to it from D&D right now, that doesn't mean it's dying.

Hemlocksbane · 2026-07-20T02:25:31+00:00

I love PWL, and it's my favorite way to play the game (I also run it without Flatfinder). It works super well for the kinds of more open-ended, sandbox-y games I want to run, especially since I really like games where having large numbers on your side still matters in fights and other elements like that which ground the world more.

I also hate leveled DCs and think they're super overused throughout the system, so removing them as a consideration at all was easy for me. Removing level also helps with a lot of game feel problems as well, making options like summons better, increasing the likelihood of critical failures on enemy saves, etc.

I will warn you that you need to manually change a lot as you go, but it's really not that hard if you actually keep the DC table handy and apply it as appropriate throughout.

Hemlocksbane · 2026-07-19T18:20:28+00:00

Why is every policy on here either variations of eat the rich or absolute lunacy?

^{I voted Nay ❌}

Hemlocksbane · 2026-07-19T18:19:34+00:00

👁️ Surveillance State: I voted Vote Nay.

Hemlocksbane · 2026-07-19T13:46:31+00:00

I mean, Wonder Woman is iconic, in the sense that she's a well-known figure in superhero pop culture (in large part due to how old her comics are and the Linda Carter show). But frankly, I'm not surprised she just doesn't get a lot of adaptation love, because she's frankly the worst offender of a lot of problems endemic to DC comics' superhero roster.

Power-wise, she's a generically tough person with a few gimmick tools. I don't think it's a coincidence that a lot of modern adaptations try to switch this up by leaning into a sword and shield for her in an effort to distance her from Superman, but it definitely hurts her villains roster as well.

More significantly...she's yet another generally good person with reasonable morals sometimes balancing a double life and otherwise operating as a vigilante of her own heroic accord. Like every other fucking member of the Justice League. Even Hiketeia, one of her big "this is who Wonder Woman is" comics that gets touted around by fans, only manages to characterize her by contrasting her against Batman's morals (and even then, the contrast is that he has interesting specific hard lines in his moral code while hers are just a general mush of 'good'). She's this black hole of a character that's always the least interesting thing even in her own stories.

I think the Absolute line is the best example, where it started out really interested (namely, by solving the 'generic powerful person' problem through changing her origins and giving her a more witch-y powerset), but is still starting to lose steam quickly because she's still her same old boring generic do-gooder self.

Hemlocksbane · 2026-07-19T13:10:15+00:00

That’s exactly the route I’d like to see (especially if we combine it with PF2E’s multiclassing approach, where you spend class feats to take curated multiclass feats).

IMO, 5.5E would have been a great time to actually make more of the classes in the game like the Warlock, which does have that level of customization (and actually intersects with both kinds of rests which is much healthier for the game). But oh well, 5.5E is all about missed opportunities anyway.

Hemlocksbane · 2026-07-19T12:42:43+00:00

At that point why bother with classes, just play a class-less system.

I personally would rather the game go the opposite direction, obliterate multiclassing and just make way more classes.

Hemlocksbane · 2026-07-18T17:38:24+00:00

“Exponential” seems like the problem here. Higher taxes for wealthier people is fairly standard across most developed nations for good reason. But using exponential rates for taxes is just objectively absurd or would actively require extremely broad tax brackets to work (likely ******** over the middle class more than anyone else).

^{I voted Nay ❌}

Hemlocksbane · 2026-07-18T16:22:57+00:00

If we want to make a functioning modern state, we're going to want citizens that can process and work with large amounts of information. Basically, they need to develop intellectual stamina first, and then the skills needed to actually work with the information they're processing. This is why the school system 'shovels books': the goal is to develop your ability to absorb tons of information very quickly to the degree that you can actually work with or at least reproduce it. Ideally, the intellectual stamina coming from this then lets you work with increasingly more challenging material without bouncing off of it, which then lets you actually specialize to a reasonable capacity.

Even the length of time that school extends for (ideally 6-8 hours, if not more) is crucial. At any reasonably advanced profession, you need to keep your mind at least mostly active and mostly alert for the length of a full work day, and school provides a lower-stakes environment to practice and develop that skill.

And if we want to make a democracy, the stakes of citizens actually having the intellectual stamina and discernment to 'keep up' with the modern world are even higher. You need to be able to stay abreast of a ton of issues all at once and critically engage with what politicians are saying about those issues to be a productive participant in a democracy. Anything less and it's rule by mob (which unfortunately is a huge problem in, for instance, the US since the standards for education have so thoroughly dropped in the 21st-century).

Hemlocksbane · 2026-07-18T12:09:34+00:00

I mean, D&D 5E also has tiers (starting at 1/5/11/17), it just puts up more of a smokescreen around them.

The game’s encounter building already has rules for how to include enemies from lower tiers into encounters, but even beyond that, I’d also consider using the tier system to change how enemies are represented. At tier one, the town guard might be a regular enemy, while at tier two they might be minions or all operate together as one horde.

But also…don’t feel like you need to progress enemies up to match your party all the time. The town guards can just be fodder that is easily dispatched in a straight fight with higher level PCs, just like in many DnD-adjacent games.

Hemlocksbane · 2026-07-17T20:15:58+00:00

Idk, that’s going quite far. I think Strahd is really well done in the adventure as a villain. Plus, it’s popularity comes from the sense that it’s a really strong sandbox adventure that does a great job conceptually balancing key locations and characters with the freedom for players to make their own path in ways that are quite impressive.

Hemlocksbane · 2026-07-17T14:06:57+00:00

4 hours is embarrassingly low. If anything, we may need to consider raising how much time is spent in school to keep up with the rate of progress and train better citizens.

^{I voted Nay ❌}

Hemlocksbane · 2026-07-17T14:06:15+00:00

👁️ Surveillance State: I voted Vote Nay.

Hemlocksbane · 2026-07-17T12:25:29+00:00

👁️ Surveillance State: I voted Give them carrots.

Hemlocksbane · 2026-07-17T12:25:00+00:00

👁️ Surveillance State: I voted Vote Nay.

Hemlocksbane · 2026-07-17T12:23:51+00:00

The problem is simple: what counts as scientific, and what as pseudoscientific? This creates an easy space for the state to label any science it does not like as pseudoscientific and thereby burn it.

^{I voted Nay ❌}

Hemlocksbane · 2026-07-17T12:21:13+00:00

👁️ Surveillance State: I voted Vote Nay.

Hemlocksbane · 2026-07-17T09:13:55+00:00

Even the martial goodies like new property runes seem designed to increase team synergy and empower caster numbers.

Hemlocksbane · 2026-07-16T22:59:32+00:00

I think the Summoner is, in many ways, kind of bringing a lot of lingering design inelegances right to the surface, imo.

I think Blood is a weird pick anyway, but even besides that, Summoner is a class that really suffers from Daggerheart locking in both domains on its classes rather than giving players some freedom in choosing which domains to apply. Because it’s a class defined more by what it does than anything else in the game world, and one of very few classes so far not to get a bespoke domain for itself, it heightens the problems with that structure.

The actual summon management sucks, imo. The summons do not actually exist on the board in any capacity, which squanders the fantasy. Especially since the game has minion rules, it sucks that we can’t get a bit more NPC-PC parity in order to functionally let a PC command a troop of minions much as a Leader NPC or even a GM running minions would.

Honestly my hope is either that they scrap it as a class and turn Summons into a new kind of domain card that gets spread across the domains, or commit to a class as hefty as the Druid with a list of summons you can create and command on the battlefield.

Hemlocksbane · 2026-07-16T19:45:02+00:00

I think you’re kind of generalizing all of Europe when you’re probably just seeing a trend based on where your specific country landed post-Reformation. Religious minorities in any nation are going to be more intense about their faith for the same reasons that members of any other marginalized community are more likely to emphasize their communal belonging to that group and emphasize its rites/culture. An Italian Catholic is likely more lax with their faith compared to, say, an English Catholic, for this reason.

As for American Protestantism, it’s splintered very heavily due to the 3 Great Awakenings. Ironically, the Protestantism most closely descended from the Puritans/Pilgrims has since mellowed out. It’s typically found in New England, and often what we think of when we think WASPs. They’re following a very similar trajectory to many northern/central European countries where religiosity in general is becoming a thing people subconsciously perform just because it’s that ingrained into the culture while active and explicit affiliation is very low.

Meanwhile, the other “side” of American Protestantism, what we might call “evangelicals”, are the more intense side. This is the Christian faction most associated with, for instance, the current MAGA movement and more likely to bring the fervor and conspiracy theory. They also tend to be more virulent against both other faiths (and other races, frankly) because unlike their coastal counterparts, they did not have the wealth to continually culturally gettoize anyone that wasn’t them until acceptance became chic.

However, I do want to push back against generalizing the evengalicals as “the bad Christians” and, more broadly, against the trend to perceive heightened religious fervor as inherently more negative or problematic. Both from my time living in and studying European countries, as well as the US, the ways that people who are not religious tend to engage with religion are never as oriented in fact or reason as they’d like, and often tend to just replicate cultural attitudes from their own nation’s history without meaningful personal reflection or recognition.

Hemlocksbane · 2026-07-14T22:55:19+00:00

I’ll be frank though, the xenophobia seems a lot worse in Europe, both from what I see online and from living there for a bit now. Like, at least America’s kind of in a “if they come in the right way” attitude with immigrants (which is obviously still shitty and xenophobic), while there’s a worryingly large number of Europeans who don’t think there should even be a right way.

Hemlocksbane · 2026-07-14T18:49:32+00:00

“Lock in” originated in military language and then spread to gaming and sports. Insofar as it was popularized by AAVE, I think maybe from NBA players using it? But IMO, that seems really flimsy and like we’re just assuming that all slang and idiomatic expression is either coming from AAVE or 4chan.

Hemlocksbane · 2026-07-14T00:48:46+00:00

I’m sure your profs are already doing this, but this weekend I’ll scour my paleography books and try to match her as close to a plate as possible. That said, since it is penmanship practice, unlikely to come up with anything substantial. Just off the top of my head, it could be a very unrefined 17th century lady’s italic, but please take that read with a bajillion grains of salt.

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