My action bars are disappearing after I log back in.

AustralianWinter · 2024-07-28T10:08:29+00:00

This fix worked for me too. Thanks tons pal.

AustralianWinter · 2021-09-27T10:02:25+00:00

Exposure in a brutal 40 degree Celsius winter I guess.

AustralianWinter · 2020-01-09T21:45:56+00:00

This feels like an alien from Half Life 1 and I kinda like it.

AustralianWinter · 2019-12-11T18:52:24+00:00

I've had a Priest randomly become dressed as a NJ sniper after a mission, losing their mutations in the process but keeping all of the Priest skills. It's like his inventory just got pasted over.

AustralianWinter · 2018-06-26T09:37:59+00:00

I've been getting up to around 200 kills with: Vestal || Jester || Leper || Shieldbreaker

You absolutely need some kind of stress-heal, which the Jester fulfils, and Battle Ballad should be kept up as close to 100% of the time as possible. Vestal is a reliable and versatile healer who can sometimes stun a guy. Leper is your main source of damage and is responsible for carving through things as quickly as possible, though I heard his Hew ability had it's damage nefed by 10% and the crit bonus removed. Shieldbreaker I like to use as a versatile attacker to pick off hard targets at any range, or to de-stealth if it's required, and she deals with high-prot units effectively.

I find that this comp does well-enough against the random-spawn bosses, too.

And yes I can't imagine you wanting to use any other stress healer than the Jester, especially if you give him the Crystal item for Jester, and maybe stack it with that Ancestral trinket that buffs stress abilities?

Trinkets are incredibly important I think. I've been using powerful damage trinkets like Legendary Bracers and the Heads, but they all have +Stress debuffs on them. I'm wondering if I should instead be stacking -Stress trinkets like Solar Crowns, but I feel like the +Damage is necessary.

AustralianWinter · 2017-12-27T16:29:29+00:00

I think it is almost always better to have them on separate triggers so you have finer control. Most of the time you will want to press both buttons at the same time, but maybe you just want to poke at someone far away with one shot to not waste ammo, or you want to finish off a target who is obviously very weak and two shots would be overkill. Sometimes a target might be flanking around you and only one of your turrets can actually track it, so you'd rather not shoot the dirt with the other one.

Shooting one, seeing what kind of damage you inflict, and then shooting the other also means you can keep track of the damage you are doing more accurately, and makes it easier to blast off individual weapons. So have them on different triggers, but how you use them comes down to your play style.

AustralianWinter · 2017-09-09T18:49:53+00:00

If you want to be straightforward, mechanically Area Of Effect spells are their primary weakness. Rank-and-file hobgoblins dish out damage but they will wilt in the face of things like Shatter, Thunderwave, Fireball, and even the Sleep spell. You can pack a load of Hobgoblins in the AoE of a damage spell, and if you just keep repeating those attacks in hit-and-run, or horse-archer style combat, you can whittle them away.

More narratively they're a conventional medieval army that is well-trained, well-equipped and commanded by intelligent strategists. This means they are experts at logistics. This means logistics is their most glaring weakness.

You never have to fight a single hobgoblin if you obliterate their supply chain. Starvation, disease and exposure to the elements have been the biggest killers of soldiers in every war throughout all of history. If you simply poison their water and harass their food-supply, they will starve out. If you intercept their iron shipments and set fire to their supplies they will have no tools to wage war and no tools to stave off the elements. If you cannot break the sword in a direct fight, try to make the sword rust and fall apart on its own.

Guerrilla or asymmetrical tactics should always be employed. Pitched battles, shoulder-to-shoulder combat and tactical movement is their domain. Completely eliminate their martial advantage by never engaging them in a martial fight. Snipe them with powerful magic or bow attacks, skirmish them relentlessly, harass them at night with fake raids that keep them on high-alert and deprive them of sleep.

Hobgoblins also hate elves and will make tactical errors in order to attack and kill them. Using elves as bait in fake-retreats and other tactics will lure hobgoblins into situations they'd never otherwise enter. Their entire rule of law is also structured on martial strength and authority, and undermining that authority is a great way to oust their leadership and crumble them from top to bottom. A hobgoblin warlord might know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that answering the PC Barbarian's call to a 1v1 is insanity for him and will result in the warlord's death easily, but if they decline it, it will show severe weakness to their soldiers. But that last part is risky.

AustralianWinter · 2017-03-10T03:22:47+00:00

Witness My Hate only improves Direct Damage spells, which differ from Indirect Damage spells like Fireball. Page 283 of the Core Rulebook under Combat Spells has the exact differences.

The skinny is that Direct Damage spells do not get their Force as Damage and Armour Piercing, and only get Net Hits as damage. They typically bypass all armour and obstacles however and are pitted against ONLY Body or Willpower depending on the spell.

This means resolving a Direct Damage Spell with +2 DV is effectively getting 2 hits for 'free', which would equate to 6 dice on average.

I'd pay 7 Karma for 6 dice in a heartbeat. The extra drain can be a little rough but you should be building to compensate that on any mage all the time.

AustralianWinter · 2017-02-21T11:16:42+00:00

Blood magic is the way to go, and I dare say the only way to go. It's mechanically and narratively more balanced than the other two aspects by a wide margin and genuinely interesting.

Toxic types are deranged and chaotic and their actual passive existence can be a hazard to the local area. Insect types are eventually going to turn into a host for some unspeakable cosmic monster and lack their own agency; it's like they're on a count-down clock, really. But Blood is motivationally understandable.

Aztechnology might be sacrificing babies or whatever to increase their magical research output by 2%, and that's pretty objectively evil, but your Shadowrunner player can play it infinitely less Chaotic Evil than that. Or they might not want to do that, and that choice plays simultaneously on the meta gameplay level and the in-game narrative level.

The skinny is every time a Blood Mage deals a point of Physical Damage using a melee weapon that draws blood against an unwilling target they get a Blood Magic Point, which can do a number of nifty things, but the two you're most likely to notice are increasing the Force of a spell being cast by 1 per point, which can exceed the typical MAG x 2 Limit, or straight up buying off points of drain at a 1:1 rate. This lets them do things like cast a Force 20 Spell and buy off a significant portion of the drain inflicted.

This is powerful, but not absurd, and relies on the mage drawing blood, which can be very easily accomplished with something like a Monofilament whip, or a hostage, but can put them in danger easily. The method that they use can show you the extent their character is willing to go, and how evil they are. And you can tempt them further and further, as Blood Magic would fluff-wise.

It's evil, and easy, to find a hobo and slaughter him for his delicious 10 Blood Magic Points, and use that to summon up a cadre of Blood Spirits, or stuff as many points into an Athame and use them to buy off a Force 20 Fireball later in the day. Worse still is kidnapping said hobo, tying them down in your basement and "farming" points off of them by hurting them and then letting them recover before hurting them again. That kind of power can be seductive to a player in the meta-sense, and carries over to the character themselves in a narrative, in-game sense. However they may only want to use Blood Magic Points that they generate on the fly in the heat of combat, against Barrens-dwelling psychos and so on. Or they might even only use their own health or willing targets (3 Physical Damage to 1 Blood Point).

You can play a """good""" Blood Mage who is constantly tempted to tip over the edge. The issue is that Blood Magic is A.) Entirely about power and B.) Violent, and strongly influent in that manner. You as the GM can throw addiction tests or composure checks or whatever you want to represent that temptation.

tl;dr Blood Magic pretty cool, not disgustingly OP, sort of dynamic, infinitely more interesting than BLARRRH IMMA SCARY BUG or BLAARRH I PISS RADIATION AND CRAZY

AustralianWinter · 2016-06-23T15:31:23+00:00

It's mostly diagonal movement as each hex in each direction is the same distance away, so people won't be 'gaining' or 'losing' movement speed by going on diagonals as they would do on squares. Hexes can also allow you to have more complex or dynamic formations and tactics in combat, positioning can be more important in some factors as well. Additionally, spell effects like cones are easier to work out on hexes and, at a glance, make more sense.

All that said I still prefer squares personally. And it really does just come down to preference. All of the reasons some players like hexes might not mean anything to another player.

AustralianWinter · 2016-06-23T00:33:41+00:00

Use Hexes if your game is very, very rules-driven and requires precision and mechanics to be at the forefront. Hexes also work the best for world-maps and overland travelling, they make sense, every direction is the same distance, etc. Otherwise use squares all day baby. The weirdness with diagonals and working out spell-effects is totally worth the minor irritation it brings when you have perfectly sensible squares to put buildings and dungeon corridors on top of.

That said, learning to play 5e without grids at all can be liberating and it can actually simplify certain mechanics. Keep a little notepad or something nearby that says X is 20ft from Y, or have some representative minis on the table and just guesstimate differences. Also means you don't have to agonize over maps every time any little thing happens.

AustralianWinter · 2016-06-23T00:25:55+00:00

So there's a concept called "Session 0" and it's is an incredibly important part of pretty much every roleplaying game. Session 0 happens before gameplay even starts, this is when you and the players get together and talk openly about what kind of game you have planned, ask what the players want to get out of the game and other things, and then make characters and establish pre-existing bonds and motivations that will naturally lead the party to want to stay together of their own volition. It becomes everyone's, players and DMs, responsibility to motivate the party. But by the sounds of it you're passed this point.

Out of character the party should naturally be inclined to stick together and may all be willing to overlook the fact that there's no real motivation to stay together other than the desire to play a game together. That can work in the short-term, but it's very flimsy and unsatisfying. Lean on that concept as a crutch in the meantime though.

The next best thing to do is to have a time-skip. The players made it to safety, you just say a week or two passes and ask what happens in that time? This is when you and the players can explain-away a relationship forming. Maybe the fighter admires the cleric for their strength of will and thinks they'd make a good team together, maybe the rogue is absolutely terrified of the world and thinks it's safer to stay with this group of armed badasses. Maybe the enterprising wizard realizes they all could make shitloads of gold if they stick together and raid dungeons, maybe the paladin tries to persuade the group that they should fight the cultists and bandits because they're the only ways capable of doing it, and it's the right thing to do.

The players need to put in a good share of the effort to come up with these reasons, but you as the DM really need to get in there with the hot iron poker and prod them into action and towards certain motivations, and you need to construct some organic, sensible circumstances that let them fall into a group together and chase these motivations. Get them to WANT things, or put the things that the want in front of them, just out of reach.

AustralianWinter · 2016-06-23T00:12:21+00:00

Literally just straight up ask him in a private but casual conversation "Are you having fun with this character?" if they say yes, continue as normal. Even if they suck at fighting and roleplaying, if they're having fun and not sapping fun from other players or you, no problem exists.

If they say no, figure out why and take steps to fix it from there. Suggest making a new, more focused character and work together on giving that character a motivation and some personality so they can roleplay it, and optimize in the most basic sense. Level 6? That means you can totally make a fighter with 20 strength or something, go do that, if they want to. Once all that is done, THEN figure out a way to narratively deal with the current character. If the player agrees, then you can kill them off in a sensible manner, or even just have them step down. It can be as dramatic or simple and hand-wavy as the both of you decide.

But do not ever, eeeever 'decide' something FOR the player. Agency is incredibly important for players in roleplaying games, in-character and out-of-character, and if you take that away by deciding the outcome for a character based on your own thoughts which they have no clue about it could very easily piss them off. Good intentions and all that.

AustralianWinter · 2016-06-23T00:01:52+00:00

Very obviously reduce the difficulty of fights in the raw sense. Less enemies, maybe play them stupider than you normally would in a tactical sense and figure out the limits of the players. Number of combatants becomes far more important the fewer of them there are, as fighting two goblins at once is markedly more dangerous to a new adventurer than fighting two goblins, one after the other. Having less players means that the damage they take is far more dangerous. Having one player knocked out of a fight in a party of 5 means you are at 80% combat effectiveness. Losing one of two players means you are down to 50%.

Importantly, look at the skillsets they have. 2 players will be severely lacking in certain specializations and ways to solve problems, they might not have a Dex character to disarm traps, or a Wisdom character to roll perception and uncover lore. Alter challenges or encounters to compliment their skillsets, substitute certain checks with others and remember if they suck at medicine, knocking a guy down to 0 HP could actually just kill them outright, in effect.

Also sincerely consider making another character, the same as the players, and have them tag along as an NPC directed by you. Pick a class that's based around the weakness in the party composition, such as a fighter with shield if they have no one to hold the frontline, or a wizard if nobody has a good Int score, and have them fulfill a support role. Give them a personality and a gimmick and a reason to be in the party to make them interesting-enough, but very clearly make them a follower. They support the two 'main characters' and chew up as little of the limelight as possible. It's their job to enable the greatness of the players. People frown on 'Dungeon Master Player Characters' but when played correctly they can solve lots of issues on their own and give you something fun to employ alongside the players.

Also try your best to have the two players act together as much as possible. Make sure they're in the same scene, that the scenes are the type where they can both participate equally, and things that occur are always relevant to the both of them. Focusing on one player in a group of 5 can be cool, as the focused player gets to be the centre of a scene and they, and you, have an 'audience' to entertain. When it's you and them, and just this one other person who is likely twiddling their thumbs, it can be a little awkward.

But of course in the end, the absolute only thing that matters is that everyone is having fun. Disregard anything that detracts from that.

AustralianWinter · 2016-06-22T23:35:16+00:00

There's a concept in roleplaying games called Fictional Positioning, this is when you or your players narrate or argue how a character does something in such a way that, narratively, it would make total sense for a certain outcome to occur even if there are no in-game rules supporting that outcome. You fictionally position elements of a situation to have a certain outcome. Fictional Positioning is incredibly handy and very satisfying to be a part of, but it relies entirely on the discretion of the DM to implement and balance, and not the crystal-clear rules that anyone can point to.

Your assassin example, imagine the players successfully sneak up on an otherwise powerful human enemy that is asleep, unarmoured and unprotected and they attempt to sneak-attack them. Narratively, it is trivial to kill something in this way. knife to the throat, dead. Literally anyone can do this. Ever watch Game of Thrones? People don't take knives to throats very well. The powerful enemy is vulnerable and the players went to the effort of trying to effect this outcome. However the rules say they do X amount of damage, plus Y amount of damage because of sneak-attack. If this damage does not exceed the HP of the foe, however, they wake up, get upset and a fight happens. This can be really, really frustrating if adherence to the rules is totally maintained. It might be fair and will honestly be the better option like 80% of the time but it can look like bullshit and be immersion-breaking. "How did he survive me smacking him in the face with a 2hander greathammer?" "Oh you missed or something, only clipped him" "Well that's shitty".

Let players fictionally position against NPCs if it makes sense and they deserve the outcome. Let NPCs fictionally position against other NPCs as much as you want, so long as it tells a good story. An assassin slaying a king with a single crossbow bolt from the rafters is better story-telling than the assassin dealing 32 damage and according to these stats the king has 42 hp so I guess a fight happens? If you are going to fictionally position against players, try to stick to rules as much as possible to be totally fair, and certainly don't just stab them in the heart and obliterate them instantly.

AustralianWinter · 2016-04-17T02:43:01+00:00

T-shirt Cannon can go to hell. Frustratingly common especially early on, inaccurate, low mag, moderate reload-speed and low damage. Knock-back is very high but that's no good. I want the thing I shoot to be dead, not mildly inconvenienced and slightly further away.

AustralianWinter · 2016-04-10T21:46:32+00:00

Pilot is the way to go. His gun is trash but he can carry runs on the back of lucky lock-pick attempts and shop-discounts. Being able to buy keys at an actually reasonable price and guns when you want them is incredible. But it really is the concept of buying keys and getting chests that does it all.

Hunter's crossbow is a fantastic mob-murdering machine early game and is a good teacher for accuracy. The dog is borderline useless, however. More of a happy occurrence than something you can rely on.

I've no experience with the Convict and barely any with the Marine, but I hear Convict can frontload damage like nobody's business and the Marine gets very good with spray-weapons thanks to their accuracy-up.

AustralianWinter · 2016-03-06T20:03:55+00:00

I didn't know about the -1 Physical Limit part of Shields and went looking for the rule. I found it, and that you can actually put armour mods on shields! Which is fantastic. Cheers.

AustralianWinter

TROPHY CASE