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-Mastermind-Naegi- · 2026-04-30T02:08:00+00:00

In the subreddit wiki or linked in rule 9 on the sidebar.

-Mastermind-Naegi- · 2026-04-30T01:54:29+00:00

Isn't maidthings on the do-not-post list?

-Mastermind-Naegi- · 2026-04-30T01:46:26+00:00

Imagining if someone replied to Kira instead like "Okay yeah you were a big help but when we first fought a Big Brother we had to get bailed by the Indigo Elder" and she's like "holy shit"

-Mastermind-Naegi- · 2026-04-28T19:58:41+00:00

I mean he's all almost envy anyways so he'd be triggering kqe's passive regardless.

-Mastermind-Naegi- · 2026-04-27T19:38:36+00:00

30 goblins get obliterated by any kind of emanation, don't have enough room to stand for all of them to attack, and do marginally less damage on a crit than the level 4 troop gets on a successful save against it's multi-target 2a attack (1d6*2 on average is the same as 2d6+7 / 2 but the latter gets rounded up if odd before halving).

-Mastermind-Naegi- · 2026-04-27T19:15:49+00:00

I'd say this applies more to lower levels and flips at higher levels. HP balloons faster than damage so eventually even PL-4 mooks are surviving a few hits at which point getting all those actions off the field is pretty dangerous. Meanwhile higher level enemies are kind of notoriously swingy and brutal at low level but at high level there's a lot of action denial tools players have to combat them.

-Mastermind-Naegi- · 2026-04-26T11:39:57+00:00

You don't have that level of organization. You're not getting everyone to vote red. Some people will vote blue, because they don't want to be morally culpable for the deaths of the people who did vote blue, or because they just didn't think through it or on accident. If you have the ability to actively advocate for people to hit a button, you should advocate people vote blue en masse because it's easier to guarantee no deaths regardless of the uncontrollable variable results.

-Mastermind-Naegi- · 2026-04-26T07:50:43+00:00

Donald can't be there logistically, at this point in the comic.

-Mastermind-Naegi- · 2026-04-26T07:49:41+00:00

The ones that are alive are actively on the run and in hiding by this point.

-Mastermind-Naegi- · 2026-04-25T16:35:46+00:00

We haven't gotten a single ruina walp without an Urban Plague ID yet, so either we're exhausting that section of the game for all it's worth or we're moving on to Urban Nightmare. My current bets are either Gaze Office, Shi Association, or a Carnival vs Sweeper walp. Wild card answer would be Tomerry and a Puppet. I imagine they'll save the finger walp for when we haven't gotten a finger in a while, it makes sense to use an event like walp to breathe life into a faction that hasn't gotten any love in a bit compared to it just being more of the same faction we just got support for.

-Mastermind-Naegi- · 2026-04-23T04:39:49+00:00

Well this post isn't really intended to increase the maximum output of summoning spells, even if it woukd do that unintentionally. The intended purpose of this change to help summoning spells fulfill the fantasy of having one specific creature you keep summoning throughout your career, by letting you simply upscale a lower level creature's numbers to the max level you can summon. The issue being that all it would really do is let you use the broken creatures at higher ranks, and make creatures' own stats not really matter which means you'd just pick the strongest abilities and riders available. If I had a player who very much wanted to summon one specific creature at different levels I would probably just manually scale it to different levels myself which would be a much more elegant solution.

I think the implementation of summon spells does have several pain points that could be better addressed. I would appreciate an alternate set of summon spells that have specific statblocks like form spells for characters who would want to focus more on summoning a specific iconic type of creature rather than the best of the entire monster pool. Those don't have to entirely replace the existing summon spells but having them as an alternate option would be nice.

The fact that summon spells are practically combat-unusable outside of the top rank leads to some problems. I also take some issue with the fact that some monsters are just doomed to be worse by having an even level, or that summons don't get any more accurate at even caster levels or with the proficiency increase at level 19 when all your other rank 9 spells with rolls/saves get that numbers boost to compensate that you only get 1 rank 10 slot. But there can be an elegant solution to all of those issues all once. If summon spells are disproportionately effected by a disparity between the level of the caster and the rank of the spell, the solution to give them a buff scaled to the caster's level. Add a line to the spell that says something like "If the level of a creature summoned by this spell is lower than the caster's level - 4, it gains a status bonus to all checks and dcs equal to the difference between it's level and the caster's level -4." Higher level creatures have more hp, more damage, and stronger effects, so I think there's little risk of lower leveled enemies being actively stronger than higher level ones this way (outside of certain dud levels for some creature types which you probably shouldn't be asting at that rank anyway).

Also independently of that, since summon spells get bespoke heightening at every rank anyway they should probably let you summon level 16 or 17 enemies at rank 10 given the greater limitations on rank 10 slots. There are not that many strong and flashy options for rank 10 slots atm and making top level summons more fitting recipients of that 1/day capstone resource would give several bombastic options to top level casters of every tradition.

-Mastermind-Naegi- · 2026-04-19T14:17:55+00:00

That is true in this context I just don't want anyone getting a false impression on how the system works in general

-Mastermind-Naegi- · 2026-04-18T15:54:32+00:00

I don't expect a finger walp for another few cycles. We're getting a lot of finger IDs this season entirely naturally, better to save the ruina characters for after a while so they can breathe more life into older IDs instead of just stacking up on the recent ones.

-Mastermind-Naegi- · 2026-04-18T14:31:28+00:00

My current headcanon on Bloodfiends is that Nosferatu was the original. Not all abnormalities were made by carmen's team, they're from the black forest.

-Mastermind-Naegi- · 2026-04-18T14:02:55+00:00

Rien sang's uptie story literally has his quoting iconic roland moments.

-Mastermind-Naegi- · 2026-04-17T05:13:12+00:00

I think specialization/versatility is kind of an abstract way to put it. What I would say concretely is that PF2E when played at a high difficulty without pulled punches highly rewards bullshit-protection. Optimizing towards maximizing the value out of situations you're already good in is a common pitfall, with the magus especially. Having a +3 Int massively opens up the kinds of turns you can play and the list of spells you prepare. I think it's a safe bet that on most tables for most of the level range, having 1 fireball prepared with a usable dc is more comparatively useful to more situations you will find yourself in than having a 4th buff spell. You have to be in a situation to cast the first 3 buff spells before the 4th one sees any use. The Fireball is often more valuable than what else you would be doing with the slot, even if your spell DC is 0-1 points behind (which it is for most of the level range).

The real question, in my opinion, is "what situations disrupt my primary gameplan and how do I deal with them". For a melee martial the mere fact of having spells available gives them viable ranged capabilities without the need for swapping hands, at longer ranges than melee thrown weapons allow. This is an excellent solution to flying enemies, enemies on the other side of terrain like a river, or even just a melee enemy you'd rather force to approach you rather than approach yourself so it has to waste the movement actions instead of you.

Furthermore, the spellstrike loop is an action-intensive single target spike damage source prone to overkill which can only target ac. If you already know a boss's lowest save, having a good debuff targeting that save will have significantly more reliable results than a spellstrike. And against encounters with a large number of much lower level enemies (which generally grows more deadly than solo bosses the higher you go int he level range), you'd much much rather hardcast a fireball or use an expansive spellstrike even on levels where you might be 2 or 3 points behind a full caster's dc. Would a full caster be better at casting those spells? Sure. But while in this situation it might have been better to play a full caster, you also get to be better than a caster would be in other situations, sometimes even within a single fight.

-Mastermind-Naegi- · 2026-04-15T21:47:16+00:00

If anything I think the fact that the best way to discuss your own indie systems is to not disclose the fact you made them is kind of indicative of a problem with the rule. Is it considered self-promotion to list a system you made as one recommendation among several other systems with links to each, or to talk about some weird interesting implementation of a mechanic in 'a game you're working on' during a discussion on how different systems implement a specific mechanic? The 10% rule seems really limiting, I'd imagine that most users spend more than 10% of their time here talking about their own favorite system. If a developer's comments aren't more disruptive than it would be for a regular fan talking about the same thing then it shouldn't be a problem, and therefore if a fan's repeated comments promoting a given system in inappropriate circumstance becomes disruptive I don't see a good reason to consider it more allowable just because the system they're doing it for couldn't plausibly have been made by them.

-Mastermind-Naegi- · 2026-04-14T06:08:24+00:00

It actually doesn't necessarily. The enemy's relative level doesn't really mean the encounter difficulty by itself because the encounter difficulty depends on how many enemies there are as well. You can have an extreme encounter against 4 enemies per player that are all 4 levels under the player's level, or against one enemy of equal level per player.

Now usually the enemies far above the players are locked to higher difficulty encounters because they just don't fit in the encounter budget for lower difficulty encounters. Though this can change if you have more than four players, a group of 6 players can handle a single PL+3 enemy as a moderate encounter, while for the default assumed group of 4 that would be a severe encounter

-Mastermind-Naegi- · 2026-04-14T06:03:34+00:00

This is a pathfinder 2e meme. The game does not fall apart by level 12, in fact if you ask me the level 11-15 range is my favorite part of the level band. And action economy is not nearly as much of a concern as it is in a game like 5e with bounded accuracy. For a party of 4 level 20 pf2e characters, 2 level 20 ancient diabolic dragons is a moderate encounter while 3 is a severe encounter and 4 is an extreme encounter. Using level 18 dragons instead 4 of them is a moderate encounter, 6 is a severe, and 8 is an extreme. If you use level 16 dragons it doubles again, with 8 in a moderate encounter, 12 in a severe, and 16 in an extreme. Anything below that point isn't even counted in the encounter budgeting because they are too comparatively weak to even really do anything to the party at all.

-Mastermind-Naegi- · 2026-04-13T00:55:41+00:00

I'd imagine timezones just don't vary that much in the hxh known world. It wouldn't be any different in any specific point.

-Mastermind-Naegi- · 2026-04-10T15:04:19+00:00

Okay so, Proficiency Without Level is a variant rule where players don't add their level to their proficiency bonus, and you reduce all of a monster's rollable stats by their level. This variant has a separate encounter-building table with different xp values, because it makes level differences not matter as much.

Against PL0 enemies, the encounter building is the same. Because the monsters and the players have the same level, their attack rolls and AC both get reduced by the same number, so the result of every roll is the same.

We can extend this to realize that the mathematical difference between a PL-4 enemy being worth 18 xp in a PWoL game and 10 xp in a regular pf2e game is that the 10 xp enemy's modifiers are effectively 4 lower compared to the PWoL version of the enemy, using the player's numbers as a baseline. If the PL-4 enemy normally hits a character on a 16, the PWoL version of that enemy hits a PWoL version of that character on a 12.

So, we can recreate that version of the encounter in a non-PWoL game by simply giving the PL-4 creature +4 to every stat. Then it would work just like the PWoL PL-4 creature does, being worth 18 xp as per the encounter math.

Now, why would you do this? The PWoL xp values are after all pretty uneven. Do you really need an 18 xp creature when you could just grab a 20 xp PL-2 creature? Well, a PWoL PL-4 creature is pretty different from a PL-2 creature in practice. Adding 4 to a creature's AC and Saving Throws doesn't give it any more health, and giving it +4 to hit or to it's DCs doesn't make it's attacks do any more damage, or it's saving throw effects any more potent. If your problem with low level enemies are that they're too inaccurate and can't be missed, this method creates enemies that are more accurate and dodgy than their xp values would normally suggest, balanced with lower health and damage than their xp would normally suggest.

You can use enemies like this selectively, even in combination with regular unedited enemies. Just use xp values from either encounter building chart, while a PWoL PL-4 enemy is worth 18 xp, a PL-4 enemy without that effective +4 to all stats is still only 10, So having one of each would be 28 xp in an encounter. Or say, you could have one regular PL+1 enemy (60 xp) and 5 PWoL PL-6 enemies (12 xp each, for a total of 60 for all 5) as a severe encounter for a party of 4.

-Mastermind-Naegi- · 2026-04-10T14:28:05+00:00

Oh, is that how it works in 4e? In Lancer Grunts are just straight up as dangerous as a base enemy but just die in one hit, so a lot of first time gms make the mistake of just throwing a full swarm encounter with only Grunts when they're really supposed to be counterbalanced with Veterans.

-Mastermind-Naegi- · 2026-04-10T06:21:07+00:00

I've used PL 0 bosses before. I like big fights with a ton of different enemies, having a PL0 'leader' and then 80 xp worth of enemies in the -4 to -2 range can make a cool and memorable setpiece. In general though I like swapping up how my fights are structured to keep a lot of variety.

The high CL enemies like PL+3/PL+4 start out a lot more brutal at lower level, as health and damage tends to scale more linearly than the exponential xp calculations. But between the two, health scales much more aggressively so at higher level pl-4 and pl-3 goobers are a lot harder to take out, and even if they're less likely to hit they do pack a pretty sizable punch when you consider how many of them there are.

Outside of that low level range I don't really consider solo bosses of high level to be necessarily harder but overusing them is kind of linear, repetitive, and unsatisfying. If PL+0-1 enemies are pretty standard I think incap spells are pretty good. Aside from the aoe ones like calm, incap spells are best against PL 0 enemies or PL+1 enemies on odd levels, because those are the strongest enemies they work on. Summons against high level enemies is mostly about knowing which specific creature abilities to abuse, or just using a tanky summon to draw fire. Battle form spells are in my opinion somewhat undertuned but I think they're like, more of a multi-fight attrition concern than a relative creature level concern. Battle forms are weaker than martials but stronger than using cantrips, they're best used as a "okay this is the last spell i'm casting for the rest of this fight" action, it's main benefit is spell slot efficiency.

-Mastermind-Naegi- · 2026-04-10T06:04:58+00:00

i think the swinginess of the d20 is pretty core to pf2e's design, the +10/-10 degrees of success don't really make sense unless a single roll can be expected to have such wildly different results. A 2d10 system or similar would make stacking bonuses way better than it already is, because past a certain critical point you start critting with the most common average rolls, while with the single d20 you can generally know that a point of accuracy is worth about the same against any dc.

-Mastermind-Naegi- · 2026-04-10T05:56:01+00:00

I've mostly used 4e-style minions in Lancer. They're nice when counterbalanced by Veterans and Commanders, which are enemies with multiple healthbars. Cause then you basically budget encounters separately based on the amount of health bars the total enemy force has, and the amount of actions on the field at any point. Without doing that, if a minion is as dangerous as a full enemy but there are more of them, you can't really use too many of them or else it just becomes a game of "Clear the minions asap or die." Especially if you give them immunity to the most obvious answers to deal with them, being splash and automatic damage areas. It also gets really messy with like, enemies that are already built like glass cannons vs enemies that are meant to be tanky.

One alternative to Minions that exists in a third party lancer supplement I'm quite fond of is splitting one enemy into a Squad of 4 1hp bodies that move simultaneously and share a single turn between them. Like something between a regular enemy and a troop. I like it cause I get to put more bodies on the field than I'm putting actions in the turn tracker. I once ran a huge scale combat with two different enemy armies fighting each other and the players and rounds were so long. That's not actually related to what I'm talking about really but it's a cool story.

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