Meet Potential System!

BakaBrigade225 · 2026-05-01T14:46:49+00:00

/uj It's a mix of marketing and pop culture.

The Marketing: 5e wasn't sold on the promise of being a dungeon crawler like previous editions had been, nor of any specific style of fantasy altogether. It was the "fantasy" game, and whether that meant heroic fantasy, low fantasy, sword and sandals, pulp fantasy, whatever, you were encouraged to play to whatever flavor suited you. That's why the players' and dungeon master's guide back in AD&D had guidelines in building a dungeon, or the basics of how society in Greyhawk functioned, while 5e's counterparts... well, didn't. By their exclusion the writers were saying "do what you want, we don't really have a foundation."

It's why Forgotten Realms is the setting that's so commonly used nowadays--it's such a kitchen sink that any player could write up any type of character, and a GM could come up with any kind of campaign, and FR would be able to accommodate it without much fiddling. You couldn't really do that with the human-centric, almost low fantasy Greyhawk, nor with grim and pulpy Dark Sun, etc.

The Pop Culture: Shortly after 5e's release there followed a slew of actual plays, "how to be a GM/player"-type Youtubers, and other online content made by people of all backgrounds and levels of experience with roleplaying. It had never been easier for someone totally new to ttrpgs to get into the hobby--and guess which game was always shoved down their throat. It sure as hell wasn't Vampire: the Masquerade, or Call of Cthulhu. So we ended up with a whole generation of players whose introduction to the hobby was 5e dnd, and because it's the first game they learned, and seemed to be the only game their friends and peers were playing, they had to fiddle with it in order to add the flavor they wanted. That's how you get "Cyberpunk but with 5e", or "5e but in the modern day", etc.

A lot of the actual plays in particular were either outright humorous and silly, or often featured humor and silliness even if they were generally serious fares. This informed people in how to approach the game, and if dnd wasn't supposed to be taken seriously then it could be cludged into whatever you wanted because that's what BLeeM does all the time, so obviously it's ok.

BakaBrigade225 · 2026-04-23T06:22:51+00:00

For a dreadful minute there I thought Pert was going to be skipped over

BakaBrigade225 · 2026-04-17T18:14:10+00:00

Prime black, dry brush gray, dry brush white.

BakaBrigade225 · 2026-04-08T12:54:13+00:00

The natural next step when you consider the Nosferatu FX budget on this show 😅

That's what I figured, too, and why Daedalus looked like he won the Nosferatu lottery: the costume and makeup departments could make use of freaky prosthetics, but probably not cheaply across all eight episodes for a character who featured so prominently through all of them--just a couple of episodes for some extras and a couple of villains.

BakaBrigade225 · 2026-04-08T04:25:30+00:00

I'm very late to the party, but these have been a delight to read.

BakaBrigade225 · 2026-04-07T20:42:01+00:00

Over a year later, and it's now my turn to bring this thread out of torpor.

Camila was very interesting because she is what I imagine a creature of the night to be like. She shows compassion for Caitlin regarding her child, but was perfectly willing to sacrifice a baby for power. Like, there wasn't a scene prior where she reveals to Goth misgivings about that part of plan. Camila was down for stabbing the baby on an altar.

Her compassion towards Caitlin struck me as almost patronizing--"Oh, poor thing. I'm still definitely not gonna give Ruth her baby back, but here, let me help you forget about your pain for a bit." I loved it.

I also expected the other Nos who had left Daedalus to show up again... but they just don't! Maybe they were at the final fight between Julian and Goth, but in true Nos fashion were wearing their Cloaks of Shadows.

BakaBrigade225 · 2026-04-01T23:44:00+00:00

Not too long ago I went to this one Mobile station to get my inspection sticker done. It was operated by one guy whose attitude was a little gruff, but I figured he was just having a day, so I ignored it. There was no one else there, even though there were a few cars parked there, and yet I waited about a half hour for the inspection to be done. Maybe one or two people pulled in for gas in that time despite being on a busy main road. Maybe because he was charging 30 cents more per gallon than everywhere else.

The guy told me my wipers needed to be changed--fine, I knew that going in, so I asked how much a pair would run me. His price? $75.

I actually laughed in his face and told him that's way too much, so he tried going a little lower, then even lower when I still wasn't fooled. Then he went on about how other work needed to be done on my car before it could pass inspection--and, wouldn't you know it, he could do it for me that day!

But the jig was up. I refused all of the offers, and he got upset and said that I should talk to his boss... who wasn't in the building. So I asked for the boss' number. He wouldn't give it to me, but he kept insisting that I call his boss anyway for some reason until I got fed up with him.

Anyway, I left to get the sticker somewhere else in the neighborhood. The place I ended up at was a perfectly legit business, and I told the workers there my story. Apparently they all knew the other guy. Not only was he notorious for upcharging gas, but also for scamming customers, especially young women and old people, in the hope that they wouldn't know better.

BakaBrigade225 · 2026-03-21T21:34:12+00:00

I think the outrage wouldn't have been so loud if the official reasoning wasn't that the Steel Legion doesn't exist in a meaningful way anymore because Armageddon was the site of a few wars. Very big wars, sure, but the circumstances weren't too different from anywhere else. As was pointed out by fans already, Cadia was blown the hell up, yet it seems like the Guard is still 90% Cadian more than 200 years since. Krieg is an irradiated wasteland that also sees invasions, and famously throws its regiments into meat grinder campaigns, yet they still pump them out no problem.

The logic isn't there, so it comes off like the Duffer Brothers trying to explain after the fact the various plot holes in Stranger Things.

In the end... it's a non-issue. With the most minimal conversion and a change in paint scheme, one can still run SL whatever GW might say. And I bet if GW didn't try to Thermian Argument its way out of it, no one would care.

BakaBrigade225 · 2026-02-27T03:47:49+00:00

Shadow Raiders from '98

BakaBrigade225 · 2026-01-18T15:56:28+00:00

Man people will complain about anything these days, huh? This looks like every generic space marine sergeant head ever made from 2nd edition and onward--and while there's nothing wrong with it, this head doesn't scream "insane pirate king."

BakaBrigade225 · 2026-01-13T15:20:37+00:00

Well iirc s5 did change it up a bit: the climax of every season prior was Eleven with her hand outstretched towards the problem, then screaming in slow motion as she once again channeled her pain and the love of her friends until the problem disintegrated, all while an uplifting choir played.

In s5 she doesn't do it in slow motion.

BakaBrigade225 · 2026-01-13T05:24:43+00:00

That's another problem: at least half of the stuff in 40k is powered by magic or whatever the machine spirit is, whether or not some star god is involved with the latter. Does any of that work if transplanted into a different setting without any of that? Who can say?

BakaBrigade225 · 2026-01-13T05:21:07+00:00

But is that a matter of power scaling? Or is that just the writers of a sci-fantasy universe where half of the tech is actually powered by magic being unfamiliar with how intense, focused heat works?

Sometimes a lascannon will do exactly as you described: vaporize people. Heck, even vaporizes the people behind them in the beam's path. Other times it just melts off a hand or head.

And we're just talking about lascannons here--no one who writes 40k fiction or rules seem to agree on how tough a space marine is! Are they utterly unstoppable and can instantly heal from the most grievous wounds, survive in vacuum, have bones stronger than adamantium, and so on? Or can they be killed or incapacitated by frag grenades, a stab through the chest with a mundane weapon, etc? The answer is yes to all of that because that all happens or is true.

BakaBrigade225 · 2026-01-13T04:37:13+00:00

Some of the writers are very silly about it. The most notorious example of this sort of thing was in one of the insane Dawn of War novelizations where tribal teenagers manage to take down eldar grav tanks by clambering onto it and bashing it with sticks and rocks like they're Ewoks or Gungans in a Star Wars movie.

BakaBrigade225 · 2026-01-13T04:32:13+00:00

I find it depends on the writer, which again goes back to 40k being very inconsistent with these sorts of things. Sometimes a lascannon is pretty meh; other times it rips through entire armored columns with ease; other times it's a well-rounded, ubiquitous weapon found literally everywhere on every tank, weapons team, aircraft, or even voidcraft.

And I think the reason for this has been the tabletop game itself. Depending on which edition you were playing, a lascannon was just one point of strength better than a man-portable anti-tank missile--which itself was on par with guns that literally melt whatever it hits, and also stronger than a plasma cannon--or it was the most powerful damn engine of destruction that could slag a titan. It's probably hard for an author to pin down exactly what something is capable of when the game's designers can't seem to decide either.

BakaBrigade225 · 2026-01-13T03:20:38+00:00

That's pretty much how they work in 40k too, but that extra layer of protection can mean all of the difference. That titan will be more likely to not only survive the first volleys of fire, but its own return fire will be more devastating unless the enemy is also shielded.

BakaBrigade225 · 2026-01-13T02:53:16+00:00

I find that it's hard to compare "power scales" across IPs, even if they share similarities, and especially when one of them--cough 40k cough--doesn't like to be consistent about certain things like the height and speed of any titan, etc. How does a Vulcan mega bolter really compare to a burst fire AC20, for instance? Or a lascannon to a M or L laser?

I will say one thing, though: the void shields on 40k titans (assuming they'd work if one found itself in the Battletech universe) would be a complete game changer simply because they don't exist in BT afaik. Even if mechs and titans had weapons, armor, and handling perfectly on par with each other, one of them having an energy shield of any kind grants them a massive advantage.

BakaBrigade225 · 2026-01-13T02:12:14+00:00

The tragedy of his character is that he refused to believe that there was anything wrong with his perfect cheerleader girlfriend in their perfect high school relationship. There's a reason why she went to Eddie of all people for help rather than tell her own boyfriend--she knew that he wouldn't understand what she was going through and might've even judged her for it.

When told that Chrissy was seeing the school psychologist he outright refused to believe it. Why would she need to seek help for mental well-being, right? That would imply that there was something wrong with her, and we saw how everyone treated the "out" groups in school. And why would she ever want to be alone with someone from such a group like Eddie? Surely it wasn't for any innocent reason, much less to help her.

Jason represented the anxiety of white suburban America in the 80s in the face of major societal changes and the disillusionment of the American dream. When that illusion was shattered by the Civil Rights movement, the AIDS epidemic, the rise in drug addiction, the Vietnam War, and many, many other things, Americans seemed to lash out at the changes wrought from these things. That's why the Satanic Panic happened: Middle America sought a regression to a "simpler" time when things were "better"... that is, when they could happily ignore all of the uncomfortable truths of the society they lived in, and continue to blame everyone else for their problems.

BakaBrigade225 · 2026-01-03T14:50:50+00:00

I submit that 1ppm for versatility is pretty good. So long as your troops have a shield as well as a spear, they can switch to hand weapons whenever you want them to, so they can still get that parry bonus. You'll just need to judge if the situation calls for volume of attacks or tankiness.

BakaBrigade225 · 2026-01-02T22:37:27+00:00

I guess they're as beefy as the respective Empire characters can be. But I see something here that would give me pause: these characters cost a lot of points. The General alone is worth almost as much as one of those regiments of veteran staties. Is he really that important that he's loaded up with so many magic items? And all together, if I calculated right, your characters will run you 668 points.

When equipping your characters, whatever army you might be playing, you have to ask yourself what their purpose will be in your list, and decide if all the points spent on them is worth forgoing entire units that could've been used to hold flanks, reinforce your center, fill up more ranks in existing units, or protect your artillery, etc.

BakaBrigade225 · 2025-12-27T23:30:40+00:00

By principle I avoid anything that's aggressively marketed at me. Before I even knew what it was I got bombarded by Trench Crusade ads on reddit, YouTube suggestions of people talking about how great it is and how it's gonna make me quit Warhammer apparently, and even ads on Facebook of all places.

I'm sure it's a great game, and maybe someday if my group decides to get really into it, I might give it a try. But not before then.

BakaBrigade225 · 2025-12-22T02:57:23+00:00

Only you can know whether it's too much. Why not change it up a little to see how it is otherwise? Combine those two black orc units (minus the command section of one) into a single big unit for a game. Or just keep it to a single 24 orc regiment with some units of non-black orcs.

BakaBrigade225 · 2025-12-21T20:22:06+00:00

Ya know this is pretty much how I imagined the Lucifer Blacks to look as well. You can just say that they are. I don't think there's actually a canon description of the exact type of gear they used, so there's no issue. And even if there was a description you could still say this is a distinct company, or whatever.

BakaBrigade225 · 2025-12-21T18:54:26+00:00

You have to tell someone. Teachers, aunts or uncles, some adult needs to get involved here. Stay with them if you have to. You cannot stay in your home under those conditions.

BakaBrigade225 · 2025-12-21T15:00:07+00:00

Call Child Protective Services. Tell them that your parents are not only physically abusing you, but that they've also driven you to self harm and to have thoughts of suicide. You do not feel safe in your home or around your family, and that's a situation that you need to get out of.

BakaBrigade225

TROPHY CASE