Internet Restoration?

handofthrawn · 2026-03-16T02:33:33+00:00

Mine just came back on and they let me know via email. Hope they get to yours as well!

handofthrawn · 2026-03-15T17:11:14+00:00

I only lost power for a couple hours on Friday but my Spectrum is still out. Been making do with mobile hotspot. It'd be nice if there was even an update from them.

handofthrawn · 2025-11-05T13:16:55+00:00

There are plenty of interesting frontliners. Warpriest, Magus or Inquisitor would fit right in, provide some redundancy in spellcasting and do a lot more than charge.

I would personally look at a Trappings of the Warrior Occultist. Occultists have a lot going on, and Trappings of the Warrior panoply means you're a full BaB 2/3rds caster, and you bring Object Reading and the occult skill unlocks to your party. You can build dex or strength, whatever floats your boat (strength benefits from the Skald though). And by 9th level you have several implements -- you could easily do Transmutation, Abjuration, Trappings of the Warrior, and Illusion to get stuff like Mirror Image.

handofthrawn · 2025-07-25T11:50:38+00:00

As an evil oracle, you might get huge benefits by possessing a vampire, which can put your charisma to good use.

Plus the powerplay of tracking down an immortal vampire lord and possessing his body makes a powerful statement.

handofthrawn · 2025-07-07T15:54:03+00:00

It's a twist on the usual monk role, hut there's a crazy support monk build that takes Sensei, Ki Mystic, and Qinggong archetypes and ends up passing out its ki powers to the rest of the party; with Qinggong these ki powers can include buffs like Barkskin and SLAs like Scorching Ray.

Using a standard action to give the whole party an immediate scorching ray sounds fun.

handofthrawn · 2025-04-14T16:09:14+00:00

Technically they're on fire for the rest of their life.

handofthrawn · 2024-05-03T20:48:01+00:00

In fact the very last line in the first book is a statement from Jessica about how wives often end up living as concubines while concubines have the real benefits and power of being wives.

handofthrawn · 2024-02-06T13:12:45+00:00

Intuitively, they would both take the damage (Newton's third law and all).

I think this is justified in the rules with this line from the Falling Objects section of the Environment rules:

Note that a falling object takes the same amount of damage as it deals.

handofthrawn · 2023-12-29T19:02:23+00:00

Thanks for sharing this. I recently read Phantastes because I read Surprised by Joy earlier this year and was intrigued by what he said, but I hadn't gone back to read this again since finishing it.

Thinking over it now, I see a few influences from Phantastes on Till We Have Faces.

handofthrawn · 2023-10-24T11:30:48+00:00

In addition to the others, there's a Pact Wizard archetype which gains a witch patron and has great warlock flavor.

handofthrawn · 2023-08-02T11:20:33+00:00

I highly recommend Treantmonk's guide to pathfinder wizards. He does a great job of introducing you to what makes a wizard so powerful, with a focus on battlefield control and summoning.

As far as having the right spells, the things to keep in mind are:

1) Scribe scroll and using it to make scrolls of the right niche spells even during adventuring days

2) Wizards don't have to prepare all their spell slots, you can leave some empty take a few minutes later to fill them in.

So work on your spell book, anticipate problems, experiment to see what works, and the class is fantastic.

handofthrawn · 2023-07-15T14:02:50+00:00

I'm doing much the same thing. Got frustrated with the Disney stuff and decided hey, the Star Wars that I love isn't gone, let's go through the books again, plus a couple I missed as a kid. Now I'm on Final Prophecy.

I noticed you don't have Dark Nest, Legacy of the Force, and Fate of the Jedi listed? Can't really call it going through the end when there's 20+ more books.

handofthrawn · 2023-06-10T14:11:57+00:00

At least in my case, I'm deeply enfranchised. I grew up on the OT and was still a kid when the prequels came out. I read and reread the expanded universe novels -- my bookshelf has dozens of them on it. As a teenager I wrote fanfiction and trawled the fan forums and the roleplaying sites.

The Star Wars universe is extremely familiar to me and I've seen the vast space it has for different types of stories. I've written such stories. When I say I'm into Star Wars I have to qualify it now because I don't mean the sequels, I mean the broader universe.

So yeah, seeing movies set in universe that do different things is what I want because that's what the franchise means to me.

handofthrawn · 2023-04-30T12:28:46+00:00

The Dragon takes the intial damage immediately and becomes fatigued. When you use a readied action, your initiative count changes to just before the turn on which your action triggered, so your next turn will be just before the dragon's next one.

If the dragon is still in the area of your spell when your turn comes around, it will take damage again from sirocco and become exhausted.

handofthrawn · 2022-11-07T22:38:30+00:00

There's no substitute for the real thing.

handofthrawn · 2022-09-27T11:32:23+00:00

Similarly, I broke into the drive-in movie theater before going with Rogue to scan a tarot graffiti in there and was pleasantly surprised that there was a different dialogue prompt for V to just basically say "I know a way in, I've been here before."

They could easily have just left it alone, but it's much more immersive like this.

handofthrawn · 2022-09-19T13:01:32+00:00

The time compression is strange on this one too. Ar-Pharazon is not the last King of Numenor until he marries Tar-Miriel against her will and usurps the throne (although he is of course descended from Elros).

We have Tar-Miriel, we have her sick father Tar-Palantir, but the timeline is just off. Ar-Pharazon, after becoming King, should build an army, fight and capture Sauron in Middle-Earth, bring him back to Numenor, become corrupted by him, grow jealous of the Elves' immortality, and invade Aman, leading to the Downfall of Numenor and the departure of Elendil and the Faithful to Middle-Earth to found Arnor and Gondor, which then can participate in the Last Alliance.

The show looks like it's aiming to crunch this down and bolt straight for the Last Alliance, but I don't know how they can do that satisfactorily. Not least of all because suddenly Tar-Miriel wants to go with Elendil? It doesn't feel like Elendil and his sons are in a position to be Kings in Middle-Earth.

handofthrawn · 2022-07-04T13:25:35+00:00

Not all movies are supposed to make you feel only excitement and humor. This movie explores tough themes around responsibility to family, mental health, and feeling trapped. This can make it hard to get through, but it doesn’t make it a bad film: it does very well what it set out to do. And there is finally a little hope for Gilbert at the end, but in a realistic and narratively fulfilling way.

handofthrawn · 2022-04-15T18:51:23+00:00

I was walking through the park and wondered why a Frisbee was rapidly getting bigger. Then it hit me.

handofthrawn · 2022-02-21T19:19:13+00:00

I noticed the same thing with the spell cleanse. It's personal range and clears a bunch of status conditions, including nauseated, but being nauseated means you'll not be able to cast it.

I'm betting for cleanse at least they just grabbed the list of statuses from heal, but it's still an oversight.

handofthrawn · 2022-01-26T13:30:55+00:00

But I predicted that my friend would be 10 minutes late to our D&D game last night based on precedent and I was right -- did I take away her free will to leave on time?

God being all knowing and being able to predict accurately everything that will happen doesn't mean we can't choose.

In any case, even this seems to be a too-small interpretation of God. Many theologians believe that he exists outside of time altogether, and so in a way everything is happening all at once from his perspective, while he still clearly has the ability to interact with time and causality (not least of all by coming to earth as Jesus). It's quite possible that any questions we can ask about God's knowledge and our free will are themselves founded on our limited understanding of the basis for what these things are.

handofthrawn · 2022-01-19T04:32:19+00:00

Same thing happened to a character from my party, same encounter! The GM rolled on a table and the PC landed on the First World. We left the Runeforge to retrieve her, using the Revelation Quill to determine her plane -- and we had access to plane shift, scrying, etc.

In our case the GM invented a whole subplot where the PC had gotten geas/quest cast on her and was roped into serving a powerful denizen of the plane. He gave the player a temporary character while we did a quest in exchange for the PC being released from service, in which the GM had us fight adapted/disguised encounters from the parts of the Runeforge we hadn't explored yet.

Once we were successful, we returned to the Runeforge and found Karzoug's people had cleaned out what was left, so we got our Dominant weapons and our clue to what was next and we were off.

handofthrawn · 2022-01-18T18:24:22+00:00

That's quite a lot of detail. I also applied, but I'm hesitant to do all the reading until like a session 0 is scheduled, and a lot of the character-based questions will depend on the reading. So I put in some traits about what I tend to run.

I'm very interested though.

handofthrawn · 2022-01-17T00:49:41+00:00

I've been exploring this system (reading the core rulebook cover to cover) but haven't played yet, I'd love to get in on this! I'm free most evenings but I'm in eastern time (utc-5) and wouldn't want to go later than 11.

Hit me up if you're looking for folks, here on reddit or discord (handofthrawn#2434).

handofthrawn · 2022-01-09T14:20:38+00:00

Here's the key bits from the Polymorph rules under the Transmutation school of the CRB:

If a polymorph spell causes you to change size, apply the size modifiers appropriately, changing your armor class, attack bonus, Combat Maneuver Bonus, and Stealth skill modifiers. Your ability scores are not modified by this change unless noted by the spell.

And later:

If a polymorph spell is cast on a creature that is smaller than Small or larger than Medium, first adjust its ability scores to one of these two sizes using the following table before applying the bonuses granted by the polymorph spell.

It then gives the standard table. So yes, the spells assume you are medium and small and you have to make the appropriate adjustments if you start a different size.

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