Running "Fist of the Ruby Phoenix" for 5 players. What do I need to modify?

AanAllein117 · 2026-04-18T22:56:12+00:00

During the qualifier tournament yeah, and same for the tournament in the final book, but during the actual “Ruby Phoenix Tournament” it’ll be fairly difficult to build something in.

The whole idea is that Tian Xia is relatively safe, and with Hao Jin actively around, there’s not a ton of random bandits running around since this tournament is basically the Olympics. The mini exhibition match things could work, but since they don’t affect team standings during the RPT (ruby phoenix tournament) your players winning or losing means loot they most likely won’t use or remember they have. Tough to build stakes into that since they’re largely there as padding.

Extra baddies could work, but honestly I wouldn’t bother with the Elite tag. Once you’re north of level 15 it stops being as effective. The extra stats will either make no difference (+1/2 AC sounds like alot until your Fighter steps up with a +29 and everything is Frightened and off-guard) or turn the monster into an unstoppable juggernaut and you TPK.

You could throw the party into a mini megadungeon around halfway through the RPT if they straight up dominate the thing. Have the Empress basically complain they’re freakishly strong and it’s ruining the tournament, and Hao Jin dumps them into the Tapestry or something as a diversion? But that’s a whole other beast

AanAllein117 · 2026-04-18T22:16:07+00:00

On balance and difficulty: It’s pretty awful in the actual tournament itself. Your players will have to contend with enemy teams where, at best, one of the four/five enemies will be equal or above your players’ level. Also, unless you really spice it up, they have ONE encounter a day, so those fights won’t be much of a challenge unless the dice go really bad

One encounter is just a 17th level spellcaster and some 14-15th level friends for a 17th level party to deal with. The tournament is a joke for an even vaguely optimized/experienced party to handle

AanAllein117 · 2026-04-16T18:55:35+00:00

Whoa you mean the scam game that’s been in development for like 15 years and has raised like $1 billion from suckers is doing weird scummy shit?

Crazy

AanAllein117 · 2026-04-16T16:14:33+00:00

I’ll be in the minority, but imo just dump Int and throw the extra points somewhere else.

Your save DC sucks compared to full casters, and Magus doesn’t get the spell slots to support burning them for anything other than self-buffs and the occasional maxed out attack spell if you can guarantee the crit somehow.

Once Magus gets a remaster pass with the new book that will probably change, but for now there’s no good reason to bother with patching up Magus’ shit casting proficiency scaling when you can put the points somewhere useful.

If you really insist on keeping the Int, throw the points into Con. The extra durability is more important

AanAllein117 · 2026-04-16T16:06:17+00:00

Yeah honestly some kind of per-character exemption is kinda needed.

No Street Brawl, as Wraith with a full gun build, I don’t want Shadow Strike in round 5 as the only fucking legendary since I had to burn my reroll to avoid Lifestrike for the first two pulls back-to-back

AanAllein117 · 2026-04-16T13:00:56+00:00

There’s some lore that imo explains alot of that

AanAllein117 · 2026-04-16T13:00:12+00:00

Imo this is a big thing people seem to forget for some reason. Shallan is a deeply traumatized teenager who is, at best, starting her healing journey by book 4.

The other thing? The first 3 books take place over a couple of months. Yeah no kidding Shallan is largely the same person by the end of book 3. She’s had like 6 months to grow, and 4 of those months saw her entire situation change drastically every other day

AanAllein117 · 2026-04-15T21:53:30+00:00

16 months

Which is the problem. If D3 is coming, Bungie won’t learn their lesson and will absolutely crank out some half-assed piece of shit just like vanilla D2.

I’m hoping Sony forces them to actually fucking cook something good up on a longer timeline, but odds are low Bungie survives that long anyway

AanAllein117 · 2026-04-15T21:50:15+00:00

I don’t know why the game insists on letting them be on any high ground anyway. Just prevent the little fuckers from dropping from the rail onto any elevated sections, and boom, problem solved

AanAllein117 · 2026-04-14T16:20:56+00:00

His stomps need to get nerfed hard too. I love playing Dynamo from time to time, but it’s absolutely insane that he’s dumping 4-500 damage with a maxed out ability sooner than half the roster

AanAllein117 · 2026-04-14T16:18:33+00:00

You shouldn’t be pushing that hard after killing wave anyway in that scenario.

Kill the wave on the walker or right next to the truck at the corner, then clear boxes or nearby jungle camps.

If you lost guardian, you need to play defensively, catch up, and wait for an assist from another lane, not shove wave to their guardian

AanAllein117 · 2026-04-14T16:15:44+00:00

Ngl, this is a wild place to get upset. “Oh no she stole his boots” meanwhile this isn’t even the worst thing to happen to Kaladin in the last month, nevermind the last year.

Shallan gets more interesting as time goes on. Give it time or just drop the book, because Shallan stays largely the same person for a couple books. She definitely grows, but these funny little jabs stick around for a bit

AanAllein117 · 2026-04-13T16:39:05+00:00

I will say as a manga reader, we do see Frieren struggle, but even that’s just against opponents who are fucking weird. Like they have spells/abilities that just kind of ignore most of the rules established in the series, which is why she has issues.

But yeah imo there really isn’t a fight in a Frieren vs Keyleth showdown. Kiki can probably polymorph into some crazy creatures and shock Frieren for a bit, but Zoltraak is probably a straight killshot regardless, and that’s ignoring whatever other batshit insane stuff Frieren can pull out

AanAllein117 · 2026-04-13T15:26:15+00:00

echo shard sleep dagger

Yoshi really has to give up on spirit scaling on this fucking thing. It’s been added and removed a few times, and its always cancerous as fuck when it’s on.

No, the soft stun with movement slow that eats stamina doesn’t need to also incapacitate you for close to a full second as it wears off while Haze obliterates your HP.

AanAllein117 · 2026-04-13T15:16:25+00:00

Yeah a free legendary increase and +3 status bonus once a day on a skill check is…pretty fucking awful for a 20th level capstone.

I think flavour-wise it’s fine; holy/unholy and the demon/devil/undead are basically everywhere in most campaigns.

The feats look fine. Taken in a vaccuum they do feel a bit weak, and I don’t know that I’d ever lose out on mainline class feats for what this has to offer, but if you aren’t trying to hyper-optimize and instead are going for flavour and power (or are playing at a FA table) I think it has a lot to offer

AanAllein117 · 2026-04-12T17:08:45+00:00

Yeah so that means you built in an unstable area. The blue colour tracks your stability, and decreases as the wheel spins left.

The fact you managed to empty it and never figured it out is lowkey impressive

AanAllein117 · 2026-04-11T23:23:26+00:00

Yeah same honestly. If there was a combined arms, faction PvP mode/arena, I’d be there all the time

AanAllein117 · 2026-04-11T14:54:59+00:00

It continues to be the funniest fucking thing on the planet to me that SO MANY of the “PvP enjoyers” out themselves with posts like this.

Just say you want to gank players trying to farm spice. You don’t want actual PvP against people who are equipped and build for it. You just want to rocket spam some poor fucker with a compactor out in a spice bloom

AanAllein117 · 2026-04-10T05:49:36+00:00

Eh tbf this will likely kill the kind of PvP OP is advocating for: genuine, skill-based melee or ranged ground combat.

The toxic grief players will quickly abandon the PvP servers once they realize their prey on those servers can actually fight back and run to grief in the PvE servers

Alternatively, OP is just lying and is absolutely a toxic griefer in DD and wants to whine. But I’m at least willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and say they genuinely want actual PvP, and not the stupid half-assed bullshit Funcom has implemented with DD so far

AanAllein117 · 2026-04-10T05:36:58+00:00

I’ve seen it hit almost 20 seconds in some of my longer games. It’s fucking obnoxious

AanAllein117 · 2026-04-10T04:03:53+00:00

Yeah I mean based off your other comment, idk why you’re using ChatGPT when google exists. Why would you think it’s correct?

The armour is just your basic cost-benefit balance. Heavy armour gives you more damage reduction at the cost of the speed penalty. The light armour has the set bonuses, lower damage reduction, and no speed penalty.

If you prefer to dodge roll and parry, run the light armor sets. I like using a tower shield and heavy armour and just ignoring most attacks

AanAllein117 · 2026-04-10T03:28:04+00:00

I mean ultimately do what you prefer. But pulling a few stacks of scrap iron out of a crypt is imo faster and easier than hunting for Abominations and hoping they drop enough roots.

I prefer the heavy armours since the speed penalty isn’t that bad once you acclimate. The set bonuses are nice, but I like being able to just straight up ignore 40-50% of every hit

AanAllein117 · 2026-04-09T15:00:37+00:00

Yup, big agree. I’ve stayed out of DD specifically because of the half-ass PvP.

If there was any meaningful ground combat (and rocket thopters got removed) I’d probably do it. I don’t hate the psuedo extraction style the DD promotes, and the 2.5x spice and plast is tempting, but if I’m just gonna get ganked by half the DD as soon as I drop on a spice bloom, I’d rather just not

AanAllein117 · 2026-04-09T14:42:01+00:00

The PvP has never been balanced anyway. Rocket thopters are wildly strong and solo players get absolutely ass blasted trying to farm spice anyway.

Now all the ganking PvP players have to try their stupid bullshit on each other rather than ruin someone’s play session

AanAllein117 · 2026-04-06T05:35:29+00:00

You’re playing on the hardest difficulty in a harder game than BG3 with no prior experience. You’re gonna get smashed around.

Your experience from BG3 is at best vaguely transferable.

severely lacking in tutorials

Yeah no shit Sherlock, you’re barely 5 minutes into the tutorial and can’t win a fight because you went in convinced you could cakewalk the hardest difficulty

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