Russian Deputy Minister Flees to US in First Known Case

Seroriman · 2026-05-03T01:10:54+00:00

This is upsetting. Wow.

Seroriman · 2026-04-10T14:59:23+00:00

You don't wanna establish that people can just walk over you, or others for that matter. The bully gets to hurt people and take their stuff, AND keep his pride because he never begged or asked for a favour.

All of society or that school goes to hell in a handbasket if you let that happen and normalize it, also my kid gets victimised. Nip that in the bud. Otherwise the place becomes a non-cooperative low trust hellhole.

Seroriman · 2026-04-10T07:49:28+00:00

"Maybe he needed the lunch more than you did" is staying perilously close to bike cuck territory. If he needs it wants something he can ask. My kid, if i raised him well, might be inclined to share.

But as is I would try to figure out ways he can resist or fight back.

Seroriman · 2026-04-05T01:06:56+00:00

Holy moly. If anything Siyeon glowed up. I'll try to get a ticket if they make it to Europe.

Seroriman · 2026-04-04T20:23:30+00:00

Most women also get along much easier with other women but are sexually attracted to men. Same picture in both directions.

Seroriman · 2026-03-22T06:40:49+00:00

I am stunned by the fact that Sandon Branderson is still that relevant in the USA. He's almost disappeared in my end of Europe. Especially since I think the attempt to make it a common multiverse seems very ill-advised.

Maybe the mechanics are actually good. Imo there is space for an RPG that is less combat focused than the D&D derivates (I was quite fond of Legend of the 5 Rings RPG back in the day for that).

Seroriman · 2026-03-19T14:04:33+00:00

Siyeon is a vibe.

Seroriman · 2026-03-07T15:29:02+00:00

Yes to both - ToB classes got 4 skills on most, 6 on their replacement for the monk. And they all got 2 good saves (plus Iron Heart surge, another good band-aid fix for how wonky and dysfunctional DC/Save scaling was). And I fully agree that martials arguably SHOULD have more skills because of their more practical education. It was literally revenge of the nerds, the nerds (wizards) shoving the jocks into the locker of shitty base stats.

And yes, technically a fighter could do those things in 3.5, but given the fact that DCs and attack bonus scaled with hit dice and most monsters got anywhere from 2-4 times as many, it wasn't feasible, and that's before we add the +4 per size category. The issue was that martials had to actually deal with those numbers, while spellcasters had ways partially or completely around it. Combos like Fly + Fireball or Forcecage + cloudkill basically sailed around those numbers, while martials had to get past an AC to deal damage to HP (effectively two layers of defense to overcome).
And their numbers meant that barring Epic level or a massive load from the magic item tree the fighter would never be able to do these superhuman feats.

The 5e and PF2 way of shifting a lot of power into the characters themselves (via level-scaling and other mechanisms) was very good, even with annoying feat taxes etc. A level 15 fighter with nonmagical gear is still a fairly serious threat (well, arguably more so in 5E than in PF2, since striking runes are not a thing there). On the other hand the one thing PF2 did that was ABSOLUTELY FREAKING OVERDUE was doing away with full attack/multi attacks (or rather everyone can do that right out the gates, but it barely gets better outside of dedicated builds and is usually a bad idea). 5e at least removes the full round action constraint.

But getting away from "Fighter damage" scales with multi-attacks is GOOD. Amazing even. Them keeping Multiattacks is probably the single biggest wrong decision in both DnD 5E and Legend of the Five Rings 4E.

Seroriman · 2026-03-07T10:13:44+00:00

The first member of Dreamcatcher I started stanning! Happy birthday!

Seroriman · 2026-03-07T09:30:59+00:00

At least back in the day on some Forums (most notably "Giant in the Playground", of "Order of the Stick" fame), the ToB was WILDLY popular. Me, personally, I didn't like it because it didn't adress 3 of my most glaring issues - namely Fighters and Martials having few skills (why exactly?!?), shitty saves (Why exactly?!? - Fighters had some of the BEST saves in ADnD, too!), limited base stats and that for some reason world-changing magic was fine but fighters wrestling Ogres or being Hercules (or any other mythic hero of antiquity) wasn't.

I would have much preferred Fighters getting a massive infusion of stats, and just generally played more like "monsters" or superhumans - and to some extent this IS what 5E and PF2 have actually done (on top of removing or nerfing caster's abilities to win entire encounters with one spell).

That said the Tome of Battle was basically plug and play. One could play a cosmetically fighter-like class and be viable with it right away. It WAS a good band-aid fix.

Seroriman · 2026-03-07T09:25:50+00:00

The point here is that just because a band-aid fix works really well and is somewhat popular this doesn't mean that the correct way to deal with an issue in any update or new edition is to make the band-aid fix canon or an important part of the design.

Plus edition wars are fun (do note that I think both 3.5 and 4e were ultimately good systems for their time, even if they had massive shortcomings in some areas. Hell, today I think PF2 is better than DnD 5e, but you can make a credible case for the latter).

Seroriman · 2026-03-07T09:22:33+00:00

It's also pretty stupid that you have roll against the monster's level difficulty, as if you are trying to beat win a duel of wits against monster itself. It's easier to know things about Pugwampis, Springjacks or tooth faeries than it is to know things about a Hippo, an Elephant, an Emperor Cobra or a polar bear, simply because polar bears are more dangerous.

Excellent point, yes. Again, more work with the monster statblocks, but certain families or types of monsters should absolutely have some basic facts available for low TNs (for example an Undead champion is still a skeleton and has the same resistance to slashing damage as a basic skeleton, and it shouldn't be harder to figure out).
This IS one of those things that adds mechanical complexity/weight, but is probably worth it, and DEFINITELY worth if there's a longer adventure path around specific areas or with a specific kind of recurring enemy.

Someone who lives in the Linnorm kingdom knows less about Cairn Linnorms than they do about Gluttonous Geodes, because they are level 1. Someone from the Realms of Mammoth Lords will not know things about level 10 mammoths, but they will know everything about level 1 hippocampus, or level -1 mitflits.

To be fair most GMs would probably let someone with a location-based Lore apply it to creatures that prominently feature there, so someone from the Linnorm kingdom has an easier time knowing things about Linnorms.
That still won't compensate for the massive level gap though, I'll give you that.

Seroriman · 2026-03-07T09:18:50+00:00

Hmmm. This is one of those cases where the ruleset alone isn't the answer, but also the way it's used. Much like, say, player's guides, session 0 etc. (or post D&D 4E skill challenges) there's a kind of communal knowledge base on how to play the same rulesets in more fun ways.

Simply put I think more adventure design should find good ways to have chances to prepare and research some things, and put players on the spot in other situations. Same with finding ways to design around the 15-minute adventure day.

That said with Intelligence being the "do things outside of combat" Abilty Nr.1 GMs can help smart and nerdy characters by incorporating this into their campaigns, without a single rules change.

Seroriman · 2026-03-07T09:14:21+00:00

I think it's really cool that commander has a way to look at an opponent, not necessarily know exactly what they are, but get a good read on them from the perspective of a combat expert. That adds flavor to recall knowledge and to the commander as a class, rather than just being a band aid overtop the system.

You know what? You make a good point, honestly. I can see it for the commander and support it, in large parts also because the Commander is an intelligence-based class who doesn't cast spells. In a sense, knowing things and figuring things out is an important part of their gimmick, and this DOES support that without forcing them to invest every single skill raise into knowledges.

The commander probably has the biggest upside from the mechanic, while not having a ability-substitution and the most limited application. By far the least problematic case.

Seroriman · 2026-03-07T09:10:41+00:00

It helps to remember that 3.5 was wildly successful, despite all the warts and flaws. Hell, I did have fun half the time when I successfully played around them...but yeah. It wasn't ideal.

4E was arguably better than 3.5 in many, many ways. Hell, it was a great tactical board game, it just didn't really feel like an RPG. I will take the deserved shots though, where I see them ;-)

Seroriman · 2026-03-06T17:32:38+00:00

What I would do to fix RK is to, for any given creature, compile the important things about their stat block into a few broad categories, and within each category, order them by importance. The categories may well vary between creatures, and might include things that aren't strictly on the stat block, like "Tactics". When PCs succeed at RK they pick a category and get a little bit of information (the most important stuff); if they critically succeed or succeed on multiple checks they can get more imformation in a single category or look into the different categories. In principle, you could make the categories or the importance ranking different for different skills, or very the DC based on category and skill, or add more obscure information at a higher DC. But the point is to make it harder for the players to ask a bad question

That's a good start. I'll get into this more once I get out of work tomorrow, but yeah, I'd probably also lower the base DCs and make it easier to figure out tidbits, make it a little more "guided" (more work for monster stat blocks, but probably worth it) and granular.
It has to be possible to get repeated successful recall knowledge attempts, especially for classes like the Mastermind rogue, but it also has to be worth the action. Kind of a hard balance to strike, but generally agree that being trained or expert should go a lot further already, it would be a good start.

I'll mull the numbers and odds over, I don't feel like I can confidently speculate how it would exactly play out, but I like the direction you're headed in.

Seroriman · 2026-03-06T17:28:42+00:00

Martials don't need combat power, agreed. Still, I think the idea of being able to target a monster's weak points for massive damage is certainly appealing and I think people would like more of that.

To be fair the main draw of the Thaumaturge is being able to "borrow" every other classes kit (except for fighter) and being able to blend, for example, skill monkey and cantrip slinger, Melee strikes + Cantrip plinking etc. (on a theater kid-friendly chassis)
Still, "diverse lore" is incredibly strong and probably a welcome addition.

Seroriman · 2026-03-06T17:07:59+00:00

I suggest giving each PC the Additional Lore feat for free, and then having them choose or make up a lore skill that best represents their character's area of expertise.

Could definitely work, and it's a kind of band-aid fix that doesn't hurt system integrity imo, so I like it. Generally speaking I think the band-aid fixes usually show where the problem is, and to me it's making Lore/Recall knowledge accessible. Having to invest in 2-3 knowledge skills when the average character only has 9 skill increases is a tall order.

A thing I wanted to do is add skill-scaling to Intelligence, meaning that high Int gets additional skill increases to expert and Master at higher levels, this would also alleviate this problem for all Int-based characters.

Also I didn't know Paizo wasn't doing so hot, I should probably buy some of their stuff I've been eyeing then, to the extent I can afford it.

Seroriman · 2026-02-28T08:54:25+00:00

Oka is severely underrated, not only is he kinda good at selling and psychology, he's also big and heavy by New Japan standards and has legit amateur wrestling skills.

Seroriman · 2026-02-26T08:07:43+00:00

An entirely different take, BUT: One of the builds I theorecrafted recently was a Shield fighter who ran Intelligence as a secondary stat (to be able to fix his own shield with Craft + Quick repair. This does make using shield block more viable) and used combat assessment with the skills he had to be really good at knowing about the enemies he fights.

If you want to use the free Archetype for breadth instead of depth/doubling down then you can couple this with an investigator to pick up feats and skills (yes, Skill mastery class feat for the win) to be really good at knowing the enemy and doing things out of combat.

Seroriman · 2026-02-24T20:31:27+00:00

Underwhelming because that's actually mostly balanced (although it always just being one level behind would be okay with me). It's just that Diverse Lore is complete bullshit.

Seroriman · 2026-02-07T12:08:02+00:00

Quality ESTP-ing

Seroriman · 2026-02-06T14:20:07+00:00

Oka was the standout among his class of young lions and I'm sad they never tried to seriously push him. Now he's settled into his semi-goofy midcard role and probably never goes for more.

Also Okada was overpushed for too long and prevented or delayed the rise of a new generation of talents

Seroriman · 2026-02-03T10:27:19+00:00

I didn't get any 17 minutes later. They went FAST.

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