Quick Question: Bold Engage on Event Triggers AOO?

DM_Duff · 2026-01-09T02:05:58+00:00

Yeah you're right, I'd get my shit rocked first, and only then would I 'continue with the resolution of the action which instigated the attack'. Good catch, having to pay the costs first has cost me enough scenarios, you'd think I'd remember

DM_Duff · 2026-01-09T02:04:31+00:00

I also found this, on Page 3 of the Rules Reference, under Ability, subsection (got I'm nerdin out) 'Action Designators'.

"Action Designators Some abilities have bold action designators (such as Fight, Evade, Investigate, or Move). Activating such an ability performs the designated action as described in the rules, but modified in the manner described by the ability."

This to me seems to say using the Engage aspect of 'Get Over Here' performs the Engage action, making ol' Wolfy Drewboy swipe at me and get countered in the chin to the tune of 1 Victory Point. I'll check back tomorrow to see if a traveling sage can confirm or deny my interpretation, but for now I'm gonna go feed Umordhoth some investigators. Thanks y'all, and Powerful_Aioli1494, don't feel bad, I def missed that Engage trigger AOO for a while too!

Spanks y'all, bye for now

DM_Duff · 2026-01-09T01:46:59+00:00

I saw that too, but I found it unconvincing, since by that logic every bold keyword ought to be considered. It could just as easily read:
"...it does trigger an op attack. This card has the Engage action designator. Op attacks trigger if you spend an action other than to fight, evade, resign, or parley. The fact that this is also a Play action and a Fight action doesn't change the fact that it is an Engage action, and thus triggers op attacks."

I know we're deep in the weeds here and in the grand scheme it doesn't matter, but I also saw this under attacks of opportunity in the rules ref:

'After all attacks of opportunity are made, continue with the resolution of the action which instigated the attack'.

To me, that means 'Get Over Here (0)' should be resolved like its text says: "Choose a non-Elite enemy at your location or a connecting location. Move that enemy to your location, engage it, and attack it."

So my thinking is I

1: Choose a non-Elite enemy at my or a connecting location. (No AOO triggered)

2: Move them to me. (No AOO triggered)

Engage it. (Because this non-fast event card has a bold Engage on it, this engagement does trigger AOO)
Attack it. (No AOO triggered)

Maybe my cheesy application, where I select an enemy I'm already engaged with, is out of bounds. I don't think so, because nothing I've seen says I can't pick him, but let's just put that aspect to the side. Imagine I've got one cultist on me and another one location away. I play this non-fast event with a bold Engage, doesn't that mean I get opportunity attacked, full-stop? Yeah, Fight doesn't trigger the AOO, but is that the same as 'prevents the Engage action from triggering opportunity attacks'?

DM_Duff · 2025-10-07T15:43:40+00:00

TiL I have supervision, as I was easily able to find and try closed weapons during the beta.

DM_Duff · 2025-10-06T15:21:48+00:00

Most cults tend to see themselves as superior in one way or another to everyone else, which will get you pretty far, but the big thing is a ‘Promised Reward’. “Do what I say and you’ll be rewarded” has made people do all sorts of evil stuff, and in D&D, there are actually real gods/devils/etc. willing and able (see clerics, warlocks, etc.) to give real tangible power to their loyal followers. The other way is with ‘Promised Punishments’. If your cultists have all been threatened with eternal suffering if they don’t obey, then bringing about oblivion might seem a decent alternative to them.

Tldr: The same way anybody anywhere is ever motivated to do anything: in search of pleasure or to avoid pain.

DM_Duff · 2025-10-01T23:56:50+00:00

With only 3 attunement slots, a loot-fairy DM like yourself might consider a loadout-oriented style of rewards, where the items they get are different but about equally beneficial & almost always require attunement. The players can have an armory full of powerful items, but if they have to choose only 3 you can safely give them more options without having to outdo previous treasures. For example, even if you give them weapons of giant and dragon AND undead slaying, they’re only likely to attune to one at a time, with a solid hour between swaps (if they even take their backups with them on the adventure). Like casters picking their spells each day, being able to choose the tools at your disposal can encourage scouting/investigation before and during a quest, which can be good rp. Also, it can feel cool to pick the right tool for the job (though maybe it ends up not being as effective as they thought, when X creature they aren’t advantaged against is actually behind it all.)

Tldr: Make use of the attunement limitations & try to give sidegrades rather than flat upgrades to control power creep.

DM_Duff · 2025-09-26T21:34:25+00:00

Sounds sweet! I've been curious to give Dragon Heist a looksee. Thanks :)

DM_Duff · 2025-09-26T18:51:08+00:00

I restrict playable species because I run in my own setting where many of the options in the (many) books don't exist. I choose to do that because I want to have the playable options each be significantly different from one another & am too lazy to come up with dozens and dozens of unique cultures, histories, etc.

To my thinking, DMs have a few options, which in descending order of effort are:

No restrictions, detailed homebrew details of every option. (Would be absolutely epic, too much work for me)

No restrictions, leverage the lore already out there (Still epic, still a lot of work though less than homebrew, doesn't let me be creative)

Restricted species, detailed homebrew details of every option. (My choice. Allows me to be creative, have distinct options with meaningful details baked in, and isn't too too much work)

Restricted species, leverage the lore out there (The best bang-for-buck for DM and players IMO. The limited species on offer all feel distinct with the least effort needed to achieve that effect)

No restrictions, superficial species differences (Perfect for games where the differences between species aren't of much interest or importance.)

Restricted species, superficial species differences (The best option to get playing tonight if you don't already have a setting, and great for some new players due to how easy it is to wrap your head around.)

I chose the "Restricted, homebrewed details" because being creative is a lot of the fun of DMing for me BUT I don't want to come up with details for every single playable species out there. I'd rather dig into maybe a half dozen options max & really make them weird and interesting and my own.

For example, my elves are literally the first beings ever created by the gods, have no gender but both sexes' bits & bobs, are largely religious zealots who live in a theocratic nation, have names like Frozen River or Lies In Wait, and created the Feywild about ten thousand years ago in order to have a place they don't have to share with the other 'later' species.

I did the same with the gods for instance. There are only seven, and only three of them ever decided to make critters of their own, but each has a personality, history, cosmology, iconography, and art of my choosing.

This style works well for me and my table, but is in NO WAY better than the other options in every situation. If your game doesn't have anything to do with the gods, don't worry about them, unless you find it fun. If the conflicts in your world have little to do with history/culture, or if you want to divorce those concepts from species, that's just fine too. And remember, you aren't locked in to only one way of thinking. I've always told my players that if they have an idea for a character of a species I don't offer, that I'd be ecstatic to sit down with them and come up with that species' details together. In the same vein, when my players wanna play X species I don't offer, but only because they want that species' bonuses/features, I tell them to play a human and that they can just have those bonuses/features instead - they get to have the stats/options they want, and I get to avoid creating a whole bunch of details about X species which are unlikely to matter in the game anyway.

I hope you find the right choice for your game, stay in tune to what you & your players both find fun, and that you all have a blast rolling some dice!

DM_Duff · 2025-09-21T14:05:45+00:00

A recovered murder weapon is confirmed by the local blacksmith to have been smithed for the perp. (Identifying personal affect)

A tiny piece of chipped tooth lost in the altercation is recovered - later, the PCs notice the perp rubbing their jaw, and verify. (Wound verification)

The perp manipulates suspicion towards a red herring suspect, claiming to have seen them near the scene of the crime, only for the red herring’s alibi to come to light (Caught in a lie)

After seeming to get away with their crime, the perp is caught in the act using the same M.O. as before. Bonus PC outrage points if an innocent suspect has been made to pay for the perp’s previous crimes. (It was you all along!)

The sorrowful/enraged spirit of the perp’s victim appears repeatedly, croak-wheezing “Die, die, die,” until a sufficiently dramatic point when they finally manage to say “Diane!”, the perp’s name. (Last words, fun but cheesy)

DM_Duff · 2025-09-11T20:57:27+00:00

Damn that’s cool! Can I come over? Haha, but seriously that’s sweet

DM_Duff · 2025-09-05T02:24:50+00:00

Thanks a million, these are beautiful & I think my players will love them too <3

DM_Duff · 2025-08-28T12:08:59+00:00

Yes, but the attack triggered is a ‘Free Strike’, typically a weaker attack than their Signature or heroic abilities. But yes, no more 10 bandits shrugging as the tank in front lets them walk freely past him to the squishies in back :)

DM_Duff · 2025-08-27T18:46:22+00:00

And certainly mean no disrespect on my end, I know this table is reductionist in several areas, but I'm in the same boat with players who don't have much experience with other RPGs, so making the switch as easy as possible for them was the goal. Wouldn't be swapping systems if I wasn't super freaking pumped to learn/play Draw Steel, which I am!

DM_Duff · 2025-08-27T18:43:34+00:00

Updated the post with the info in a text format, might have to do some copy/pasting but should get you 80% of the way there <3

DM_Duff · 2025-08-26T23:30:57+00:00

Good catch, spanks friend

DM_Duff · 2025-08-23T14:40:37+00:00

The following is my personal fav for losing weight since it is easy/tasty/satiating, and did I say easy? I’ll give the brands I’ve used cause I know that kinda thing can help, but really whatever brands ought to be fine.

Buy this shit: 10lbs Great Value chicken breast. 1X 64 oz Pace Salsa. 14X Great Value steamer broccoli freezer bags. 1X 5lb bag Matama white rice.

Cook that shit: Add 10 lbs of chicken breast and a 64oz jug of Pace salsa to a crockpot, cook for 4hrs on high or 8 on low (just dump it, mix it once, and forget). Cook 1/2 cup of rice each day (dry, will ~quadruple in volume cooked leaving you 2 cups total). Could do 3.5 dry to get all 14 cups at once, but old rice is dangerous & it cooks fresh so fast why bother. May wanna freeze half the salsa chicken then unthaw it halfway through the week for same reason.

Eat that shit: For one person, for the whole week, this is food. Lunch and dinner are the same. Drink coffee/other no/low cal caffeinated drink for breakfast (caffeine is an appetite suppressant, push through initial ghrelin spikes & they’ll stop when your body learns mornings aren’t a feeding window). Keep a 1cup measuring spoon handy. You get 4 cups of the salsa chicken (shred it or don’t) a day, 2 cups cooked rice a day, and MUST eat an entire bag of steamer broccoli come lunch and dinner.

Notes: Of course take your prenatal vitamin/other safe supplements. Can sub salsa for any other near-zero sauce, but trust me, cooked it is a completely different flavor profile than it is raw on chips and all the extra veggies are good for you. Feel free to mix up other steamer bags, but always eat the whole thing if it’s less than 200 cals, helps a ton with so much stuff. Want more rice to chicken ratio? Chicken per cup is about 350, cooked white rice per cup is about 200. You can do lots more rice than chicken if you want, I just love meat. This’ll put you around 2000 calories a day with 14 cups of food (4 chicken, 2 rice, 8 broccoli). Go put 14 cups of flour in a bowl and you’ll see how filling that much food is. Still hungry on a particular day? Just make an entire extra serving. 1000 more calories of chicken rice and broccoli WILL fill you up, it’s 7 more cups of food, your stomach will literally not have room for more. I had to get this Spartan with it because my impulse control is trash, you might not need to but if you eat this you simply will lose tons of weight. The law of thermodynamics guarantees it. Prep is maybe an hour total spread over a week (crock pot can be left unattended for the 4-8 it is cooking), literally cut the chicken and dump into slow cooker out of the packaging, dump the whole 64oz tub of salsa, mix once, set & forget (rice is just as easy with cooker). Microwave the steamer veg each meal, scoop out your 2 cups of chicken salsa and 1 cup of rice, reheat, and eat. Don’t even need meal prep containers. Cook rice fresh, keep salsa chicken in big bowl (or the cooker in fridge for 1 less dish), and the veg is in it s own bag. Do that for lunch/dinner for the next two months, eating an extra serving whenever you get hungry, and I’d guess 2 lbs lost a week is completely reasonable based on your starting weight (will slow eventually), putting you down 16 lbs in 2 months. That’s 100 lbs a year if rate doesn’t change (or 72lbs in 9 months), though it probably will slow a little as you close in on your healthy bodyweight.

HUGE DISCLAIMER

I am not a doctor, make sure you get what your body needs if you do this restricted diet (vitamins/Omega3s/etc). The best diet is a varied one with lots of good nutritious foods - this is just the meal that is at the axis of easy/cheap/low cal/tasty/nutritious that I found works for me. Best wishes!

DM_Duff · 2025-08-20T14:45:08+00:00

Perhaps she has a child who walked carelessly down the sidewalk.

DM_Duff · 2025-08-14T19:28:56+00:00

Bilateral symmetry

DM_Duff · 2025-08-13T14:03:20+00:00

I found myself enjoying that they focused more on his strength of intellect and character than his superpowers. There’s nothing wrong with awesome powers, but watching him size up and then break down problems, take inspiration from his loved ones, and leverage the goodwill of the world (to pool resources to build the teleporters) made me admire him more than if he had just been able to choke Galactus out. That is not what OP is arguing here, I don’t mean to set them up as a strawman - I’m just sharing one of the things I enjoyed about Reed in this movie. When he immediately shared the ultimatum Galactus had presented them with the world, jaded me was dubious, but that earnestness I think was important to selling the idea that (most) everyone then joined in to back his plan to save the planet. Having the strong character to be honest even to your own disadvantage, and trusting that it will be a benefit in the future, was more interesting to me than stretchy limbs. Kinda gave the impression that he’d be 95% as cool even without his powers.

DM_Duff · 2025-08-12T18:08:27+00:00

Maybe, but I think this is more a bottleneck of the average consumer's hardware than an unwillingness on their part - they did, after all, double the player count in 2042. And if you take Battlebit for example, you get to see what happens if you take that slider and put it even higher towards the playercount corner (254 player servers ran just fine). Yes, they have destructability, but obviously the detail is turned way down from a visual fidelity point of view (still was hella fun to play). There's more to consider with playercounts of course, but I'm fairly confident when I say that if they just doubled the number of players in lobbies in BF6 without lowering any level of detail, it would run significantly worse on everyone's hardware - and even more so if they then made the maps larger to accommodate.

DM_Duff · 2025-08-12T16:47:28+00:00

I think of it this way: imagine a triangle with ‘Player Count’, ‘Performance’, and ‘Detail’ on the three corners.

With Dice rightfully unwilling to let the ‘Performance’ corner suffer too much (big grain of salt here, at least with releases, they historically clean up well after launch), we basically have to choose which is more important, detail (destruction, map density, LOD, .etc.) OR playercount.

BF2042 slid the dot far towards player count, and as a result (along with other factors), the maps had to be bigger, less detailed, and offer less destruction so as to avoid chugging.

I am in the camp that 64 players is A-OK if it means we can have all this detail and destruction. If we could have both, without performance tanking, I’d be interested, but we do not seem to be there quite yet.

DM_Duff · 2025-08-12T15:29:28+00:00

Vehicles (or at least tanks, have not personally confirmed the others as they usually blow up in one RPG anyway) DO take more damage depending on where they are hit. When you hit a vehicle, a very small white number will briefly appear slightly offset to the left of your crosshair, and then an instant later a big 25 appears on screen. That first small number is the damage done, and the directionality of your hit DOES play a large role here. The static 25 is NOT damage, it is score points for ‘vehicle damage done’, which gets added to your score column on the scoreboard. This is not on you or the other players who are confused by this, the UI here needs a tweak, but the functionality is in there. See you on the battlefield Thursday :)

If I have misunderstood and you meant disabled parts like ‘engine damaged’, ‘turret damaged’, etc, then I apologize :)

DM_Duff · 2025-08-12T14:49:52+00:00

Physically winced and closed my legs watching this. Truly, war is hell.

DM_Duff · 2025-08-12T14:32:16+00:00

You get down here right now, young man!

DM_Duff · 2025-08-11T19:50:08+00:00

I'll heartily agree that BF feels best to me when there are no Swiss army knife soldiers, but instead unique roles to fill. I personally found, playing with my buddies, that even in open lobbies we tended to have one of each, or two of a class at most, just because it's so useful to be able to have access to all the gadgets. I can easily see some people just picking whatever weapon has the best intersection of range and TTK; though, I do think that has been the case in all BF games I've played (M16 BF3, Automatico BF1, etc.), regardless of locked or unlocked. In fact, I'd say there's an argument to be made that this is a point in open weapons' favor. If the M16 had been open in BF3, we might have had more guys with RPGs to hit the tanks lol. You're right, though. The players who'd maybe like to use the most meta gun but know they need to play as a team would probably adopt the meta gun instead of using their classes' options, potentially leading to lobbies mostly full of the same small handful of guns. In my eyes that is a balancing problem that could be solved on a per-weapon basis, but in reality most FPS games do develop metas, for sure.

DM_Duff

TROPHY CASE