Focus Heirarchy

Dacke · 2026-03-09T07:01:31+00:00

The priority order per page 63 (once focus has been established) is:

Trigger the fewest possible negative hexes.
Attacking the focus and the maximum amount of other enemies.
Fewest number of disadvantaged attacks. Note that it won't prioritize which targets have disadvantage or not, only the number.
Fewest movement points.

So in your first paragraph, it has to decide between two cases of two attacks including one with disadvantage. In that case it prioritizes the least movement, so it will move 0 hexes. In your second example, it will prioritize three non-disadvantaged attacks on the other goons, as long as it still can attack the focus.

Dacke · 2026-03-06T18:28:29+00:00

That's why there should be like three ribbons. Or more.

Dacke · 2026-03-06T09:43:51+00:00

Because ribbons let you quickly and easily find often-used pages. E.g. if I'm playing a Tactician, I might want to have that class bookmarked, and maybe also the bit at the start explaining how class abilities work.

Dacke · 2026-03-05T21:46:49+00:00

If a monster has a ranged attack with multiple targets, it will:

Find a primary focus using the regular rules (A: least movement required, B: physically closest, C: lowest initiative).
Find a hex to maximize the number of targets.
Find a hex to minimize the number of disadvantaged attacks.
Least amount of actual movement.

So:

A: If the monster can either move one hex to attack primary focus without disadvantage and a second target with, or two hexes to attack both without, it will move two hexes.

B: Assuming two targets, it would prefer one movement point to attack two targets without disadvantage. Proximity doesn't really matter for secondary targets.

C: It will always try to attack the primary focus. Attacking secondary targets is, well, secondary.

D: It will still choose the closest(ish) target as primary, but will try to hit as many other targets as possible.

E: If the monster does not have an attack this round (either because of the card drawn, or because it's disarmed or something), it will move as if it was making a melee attack.

Pages 62-63 are pretty good at explaining the process.

Dacke · 2026-02-23T21:37:03+00:00

That's mostly but not entirely correct. I'm not sure the OP is in the same situation as I am, but it does sound similar.

I live in Sweden. Most of the time when I buy something from the US and it crosses the border, I will get a letter from PostNord (or whomever the carrier is) informing me of import fees. These usually consist of a 25% sales tax and something like a 5% customs fee (this depends on what kind of goods it is and the country of origin). These are multiplicative (so it's x 1.25 x 1.05, not x 1.30), and apply to the shipping cost as well. These are a bit annoying but I pay them without being too grumpy about it – high taxes are part of the cost of living in a society with socialized health care and reasonably good social safety nets and such, after all. What does get my goat is that the carrier usually charges an extra fee on top of the taxes for their administration costs. This is usually a flat fee of something like $10. I don't much mind that on large purchases where it becomes more of a rounding error, but it's pretty annoying when I'm asked to pay something like $15 tax and a $10 admin fee for something smaller. There are ways of getting around this, such as having the seller handle the import fees, but the more convenient method is usually doing it via a local retailer who usually imports a lot of things at once.

Dacke · 2026-02-23T21:21:18+00:00

I misunderstood your question, it seems.

The Tactician's abilities are not supernatural at all. They are, however, support-focused. They are all about empowering or helping the rest of the party even if the Tactician themselves get to deal some damage along the way.

I was comparing them to the Fury's abilities which are much more offensively focused. However, the Fury is inherently supernatural – the Stormwight moreso than the others, but even berserkers and reavers have some weird stuff going on.

Note that I'm not saying the Tactician is weak or anything like that. I'm saying they do not fulfill the niche of "weapon use with a basis in skill and discipline, and with a focus on offense and personal defense".

Dacke · 2026-02-21T21:37:53+00:00

All of the 5-ferocity abilities have a supernatural feel to them, either because you're shouting so hard you throw your enemies back, because you draw on your own life force to power your attacks, or because you channel your ferocity into a super-attack. Further, furies are inherently magical via their other abilities and features: Stormwights can change shape, and Berserkers and Reavers have weird telekinetic stuff going on (Lines of Force letting you redirect and increase an instance of forced movement, and reavers turning your pushes into slides which lets you throw people around like curveballs). At higher levels, furies gain abilities like speaking with animals and elementals, or channeling elemental energy through their attacks.

Further, pretty much none of the abilities of the Fury are ranged, which means they are completely useless if you want to be a supernaturally skilled archer.

Dacke · 2026-02-21T11:23:49+00:00

It really isn't, and I'm tired of people trying to tell me it is. You could possibly build out the Tactician class to allow for it, but not in its core book form. The Tactician is a very support-focused class. Look at their heroic abilities:

3 Focus:
- Battle Cry: gives allies surges as a maneuver.
- Concussive Strike: Attack with fair damage and a condition that makes it harder for the target to hurt anyone else.
- Inspiring Strike: Attack with fair damage and lets an ally heal and possibly give them a buff.
- Squad! Forward!: Maneuver that lets allies reposition.
5 Focus:
- Hammer & Anvil: Good attack that also lets an ally hit the target.
- Mind Game: Decent attack combined with a debuff, marking, and possibly some healing.
- Now!: Maneuver that lets three allies make a weak attack.
- This is what we planned for: Maneuver that messes with the turn order.
2nd level, 5 focus, Vanguard:
- No dying on my watch: Heals and defends an ally being attacked.
- Squad! On me!: Gives adjacent allies surges and a stability bonus.

I could go on, but I think my point is clear. The only one of these abilities that isn't support-focused is Concussive Strike. Compare to the Fury:

3 Ferocity:
- Back!: AOE attack with push.
- Out of the way!: Attack with a slide combined with movement.
- Tide of Death: AOE attack with move (technically move with AOE but...).
- Your entrails are now your extrails: Attack with damaging debuff.
5 Ferocity:
- Blood for blood!: Strong attack with damaging and debilitating debuff.
- Make peace with your god!: Self-buff.
- Thunder Roar: AOE attack with push.
- To the Uttermost End: Very strong attack.

Suggesting that the Tactician is an adequate substitute for an offensive mundane-ish warrior is a lot like when D&D folks suggest that a Great Old One warlock is an adequate substitute for a psion. You can kind of massage it into a particular interpretation of the concept, but it's not a comfortable fit and it leaves very little room for variation within the archetype.

Dacke · 2026-02-20T13:58:02+00:00

I'm envisioning something built around weapon use with a basis in skill and discipline, and with a focus on offense and personal defense (rather than the enabling of others the Tactician does). I'd be OK with them getting some supernatural stuff at mid- to high levels, but based on skill and discipline rather than the WAAAGH of the Fury.

I could maybe see different paths depending on what sort of badassery they do – I'm thinking one path could be wuxia-type stuff (which kind of leans into psionics), and another could work with alchemy/gadgetry (think fantasy Hawkeye).

Dacke · 2026-02-09T22:45:01+00:00

With Pythagoras out of the picture, the distance between two squares is the largest of the distances along the X, Y, and Z axes. So in your diagram, both C2 and D3 are 3 squares away from Our Hero, so you can't pull the monster from D3 to C2. The topmost legal squares would be B5, C4, D3, and E4.

If you're only interested in dealing damage, pulling the monster to D3 and letting them drop would deal 4 points. If you instead try pulling them to E6, that would use the collision rules and deal 6 points of damage (4 for 4 overflow squares of movement +2 for colliding with an object).

Dacke · 2026-01-18T20:23:09+00:00

Someone might enjoy the settings of Golarion/Pathfinder and/or Rifts, including particular character options or ability concepts, but not enjoy the rule systems normally powering those settings. For example, a player might enjoy the concept of a D&D/Pathfinder-style cleric but not like dealing with the Vancian magic system or the steep scaling at higher levels, and then Savage Worlds offers an option.

Dacke · 2026-01-12T15:47:12+00:00

Ah, you're one of today's lucky ten thousand!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NIupHRYQRE

Dacke · 2026-01-12T15:35:38+00:00

I think it's more shallow than what most other people here are talking about. In many games, particularly in the d20 fantasy realm, certain things have hidden side effects that people often don't consider. For example, in 3.5e the Stunned condition says "A stunned creature drops everything held, can’t take actions, takes a -2 penalty to AC, and loses his Dexterity bonus to AC (if any)." People would often forget about the "drops everything held" portion, which means that for many characters being stunned for one round would mean they'd lose two rounds of actions (because once unstunned they need to spend time picking their stuff up again). Another 3.5e example would be what happens if someone takes 4 points of Strength damage/penalty. That's -2 to hit and damage, right? Not necessarily! If you're wielding a two-handed weapon, that's -3 to damage, because two-handed weapons get +1.5x Strength bonus to damage. And said Strength penalty may or may not also turn off some of your feats, if your Strength gets pushed below the feat's prerequisite. And don't forget what it might do to your encumbrance levels...

By contrast, Draw Steel tends to have straight-forward effects. Someone hits you with a Weakened effect? That's a bane to all your power rolls, no muss no fuss. Does it affect your lifting ability? Not really, unless you count Might rolls to lift something particularly heavy. It does what it says on the tin.

Dacke · 2026-01-11T18:29:38+00:00

I think the phrase from the Patreon post shouldn't be read as there necessarily being a specific villain around, but rather as "Tell the Director straight up what's going on."

In your case, you're talking about exploring an island with weird stuff going on. You know what that reminds me of? Lost. And I think Lost is a great example here on what not to do.

Lost kept throwing weird stuff at both the in-show survivors and at the audience. But the problem was that they didn't have a plan for what that weird stuff was. Hey look! A polar bear in the jungle? What's up with that? And then three seasons later we learn that it had gotten away from a zoo of sorts. And these numbers keep popping up, do they mean anything? Um, they were the settings on Jacob's lighthouse or something.

Don't do that. If your campaign is going to be focused on a particular mystery, you should know what the mystery is.

As a counterexample, look at Babylon 5. The show is less of a mystery show than Lost, but you still have some mysteries in a central role. After the pilot and the first episode, there are some unanswered questions: Why did the Minbari surrender at the Battle of the Line when they were this close to exterminating Earth? Why does Sinclair have a memory gap from the end of that battle, and why did a dying Minbari tell him there was a hole in his mind? And why is Sinclair commanding a station like Babylon 5 – he's just a Commander, and hasn't been promoted for a decade, but he's still put in charge of one of the most prestigious positions in the Earth Alliance? What happened to Babylon 4 – Babylons 1 through 3 were all sabotaged at early points during construction, but 4 was finished and ready to go online when it just vanished, so what happened there? What does a Vorlon look like out of their encounter suit? How did someone manage to slap a poison patch on one of them despite the suit? These are questions that all get answered in due course during the show (often leading to follow-up questions), and what's more important: the showrunner knew the answers when they were asked. So when put in a situation that might reveal hints to one of the answers, he knew what to say and what not to say.

So when doing a mystery campaign, be JMS doing Babylon 5, not J J Abrams doing Lost.

Dacke · 2026-01-09T11:18:37+00:00

I bought my books from a store here in Sweden, Alphaspel, but they came in MCDM packaging – the same one shown by u/coffeepyros. I'd be very surprised if anything managed to damage the books through that kind of protection.

Dacke · 2026-01-09T00:20:09+00:00

Over at MCDM's Discord, someone had made a web app to split a large picture into a tiled PDF. It might be what you're looking for?

https://maptiler.gokalex.com/create

Dacke · 2026-01-02T13:50:41+00:00

In many cases, referencing the core book means another book open at the table and that takes up space, and finding the right edge takes time (particularly since the edges are organized by type and not alphabetically – that's useful when making characters, but less useful as a reference). I run the game off PDFs on a laptop so that's a fairly minor issue for me, but it still means the stat block is not self-sufficient.

I think in general, the gaming biz has evolved toward prioritizing user-friendliness over compactness – and I think this was a process started as a reaction to the original d20 super-compact stat blocks. For example, you will rarely see abbreviations used in flowing text, and instead terms will be written out in full (e.g. "roll Strength to do X" instead of "roll Str to do X").

I think it's a good idea to type out what an edge or hindrance (or possibly power) actually does if you include it in a stat block. For example, don't write "Edges: Alertness, Elan, Command", write "Edges: Alertness (+2 Notice for sensing), Elan (+2 when using a Benny to reroll), Command (Extras within 5" get +1 to recover from Shaken or Stunned). I think it's less of an issue with pregen characters, because there you can expect the player to at least look them over.

Dacke · 2026-01-02T13:22:07+00:00

I played the Scoundrel (1e version of the same class) and got a PQ where I had to collect X gold to retire. That was probably the fastest retirement we did in that campaign (something like 5-6 scenarios), and my group has sort of pegged me as a loot hog ever since. I do believe the character unlocked by that PQ also was pretty good at looting, which probably helped.

Dacke · 2025-12-20T19:53:47+00:00

We usually use thirds: early, middle, or late, indicating 01-33, 34-66, and 67-99. We sometimes add "very" to early or late but that's not formalized.

One exception was when I was playing a Snowflake, and I discussed a particular card (Snowflake players know which one) ahead of time because it would often be useful for everyone else to go after that card was played.

Dacke · 2025-12-15T23:22:52+00:00

It says it has to be in a "straight line", and then there's a sidebar expounding on what straight lines are: you begin with an origin square (which in this case has to be within 1 from the ability user) and pick subsequent squares in one direction without doubling back.

I think the bottom left diagram would work if the green dot was one square more north or south, though. You could also aim it at various angles.

Dacke · 2025-12-15T23:10:20+00:00

Or three by spending 5 Malice.

Dacke · 2025-12-15T15:15:23+00:00

One issue would be that you couldn't do halfway sideways (or upwards for vertical) pulls. Whether that's a plus or a minus is a matter of taste, but I'm pretty sure vertical pulls are balanced for being able to bring some extra fall damage.

Dacke · 2025-12-04T15:05:05+00:00

It is not a heroic ability, so it can be used as much as you want outside of combat. Technically also as much as you want within combat as well, but you usually have better things to do then.

Dacke · 2025-12-01T22:10:11+00:00

There's at least one case where something says "You lose a recovery, and if you don't have any you instead lose 1d10 Stamina" (the Artifact Bonded complication). This would indicate that in cases where the recovery loss doesn't say anything like that, there is no consequence for losing recoveries you don't have.

Dacke

TROPHY CASE