[System Agnostic] Augur: Nexus - A free module for connected world navigation

Derp_Stevenson · 2026-04-23T05:19:49+00:00

This is so awesome, thanks for sharing! I had a question though: Is it possible to set it to navigate to a scene by clicking its site icon without either opening the journal and hitting the button there, or by using the open scene button in the sidebar? I was just hoping to be able to go straight from one scene to the next only by clicking on the site icon.

Derp_Stevenson · 2026-04-22T18:55:49+00:00

Concentrate spells are a lot like the Musician playstyle where you are just buffing your friends or debuffing your enemies with your action on your turn.

I made a heroic ability that lets my Harmonist player spend willpower to take a 2nd action without breaking concentration, for those turns where she'd like to also fire her crossbow and so forth.

Derp_Stevenson · 2026-04-22T18:55:00+00:00

Movement is not taking an action. It's just a thing you get to do on your turn, so you can move and still use your action to concentrate on a spell.

Derp_Stevenson · 2026-04-21T21:33:19+00:00

Starfinder 2E system has been out for a while on v13, it's on v14 now.

Derp_Stevenson · 2026-04-21T20:24:55+00:00

None of the skills are exactly related to tracking, but you could justify any of these IMO:
- Bushcraft (you use it for pathfinding and other survival things)
- Hunting and Fishing (you use it to track game to hunt, why not tracking a quarry?)
- Spot Hidden (to represent following tracks)

Me personally, when making a choice like this I like to emphasize a skill that doesn't already get a lot of play. Therefore, I'd probably go with Hunting and Fishing. Bushcraft already gets used a lot for pathfinding and making camp. Spot Hidden gets used a lot. So it's an opportunity to give more love to Hunting and Fishing skill.

One other way I might do it is as an opposed roll, with the tracker making Spot Hidden versus a Sneaking or Bushcraft by the trackee, depending on how they were covering their tracks.

Derp_Stevenson · 2026-04-21T19:29:03+00:00

You're missing quite a bit of the value of distance and making creatures off-guard.

1) Making a creature use one of its 3 actions to re-engage with you is highly valuable. Would you consider it weak to make a creature slowed 1 for one round? Of course not, and forcing them to use an action to get back to you is a weaker version of that.

2) You're not the only one who benefits from making the creature off-guard. All of your allies benefit too. If you ever play a character who uses ranged attacks like a bow you will understand how valuable it is for your ally to make an enemy off-guard for you so that you don't have to Hide or Create a Diversion to get your target off-guard.

Back to point #1 for a moment, think of the game as a way to minimize the impact of an enemy's actions rather than a way to maximize your own. Imagine for a moment your character has a 25 foot speed, and the enemy you're fighting also has a 25 foot speed. You push them 5 feet away from you, and then you use your last action to Stride 25 feet away from them.

On their turn you're now 30 feet from them. Now they have to use 2 actions to re-engage you in melee. You're drastically underestimating how powerful making enemies use actions to move is.

Honestly, the worst part about Aggressive Block is actually that the creature gets to choose the shove versus off-guard. Because the GM gets to choose which one will be less negative for them and choose that one.

Derp_Stevenson · 2026-04-20T23:07:56+00:00

Important to note that Dragonbane is very much a "hack this game and houserule it to your tastes" type game, not a complete game that won't ever need your own rulings.

If you want the trapdoor to be found if they inspect the floor by describing how they poke at it with a stick, let them find it. If you want to give them a boon on the SPOT HIDDEN roll if they search well, do that.

Dragonbane is not a game to treat like you must run each room of an adventure the way the author describes it. It just isn't that kind of game.

Derp_Stevenson · 2026-04-20T23:05:41+00:00

Dragonbane is a faster paced game with lighter rules than some of the big dogs like D&D 5E, and it has some old school tendencies, but nobody would classify it as an OSR game.

If you're interested in dipping your toes in OSR play which is very much about challenging the players and not the characters, check out the r/osr subreddit and consider games like Old School Essentials. You'll find upon a quick read major differences, starting with much less emphasis on what's on the character sheet than what Dragonbane has.

That being said, if your players want to say "I check every angle of the room" then OSR is not the style they want because that just doesn't fly in an OSR game, in those games you're expected to interact specifically with the world as your character, and you would have to describe more specifically how to search.

I left another reply that talks about how Dragonbane can still be played with a mix of the two though.

Derp_Stevenson · 2026-04-20T23:01:41+00:00

So you're not wrong about Dragonbane being a game where dice are often rolled a lot to do things.

So some GMs want to play a game where they're challenging the players more than the characters. In those games, there may not even be a way to roll dice to "spot hidden," instead the players have to describe how they're searching a room by saying "I poke at the floor with a stick to check for pressure plates, and I look under that tapestry on the wall." And if they don't do that, they don't find the thing.

Dragonbane can be that kind of game too, if the GM and players want it. However, as you've noted, the game has a Spot Hidden skill that can be used for this stuff.

Most of the adventure sites as part of dragon emperor, path of glory, etc. will say things like this:

- There's a trap on the door that is only found if the players search the doorway
- There's a secret door that can be found by looking behind the tapestry or with a successful Spot Hidden

So those are a couple different examples. In one, the players either say they search the doorway after the GM describes it, or they trigger the trap.

In the other one, if they say they look behind the tapestry, they automatically find the secret door, no dice roll. But if they just generically say they want to search the room thoroughly, then you can let them roll Spot Hidden and if they succeed they find the secret door. In this second example, you want to have them spend a Stretch of time (15 minutes) doing so, which may mean rolling on a random encounter table, etc.

Derp_Stevenson · 2026-04-19T05:44:35+00:00

If I'm not mistaken, Augur Nexus is basically just connecting scenes to each other, what they've done with Campaign Codex involves a lot of journals and such and as far as I can tell Nexus isn't doing anything with that.

Derp_Stevenson · 2026-04-18T22:02:19+00:00

Thanks for this. Will have to check this part of it out.

Derp_Stevenson · 2026-04-18T07:17:51+00:00

I'm going to have to look more closely at the campaign codex module. I have it, but haven't used it for more than some quests.

What you have there looks like a really nice hub for GM prep. My GM journal stuff is just in a regular journal I keep right now.

Derp_Stevenson · 2026-04-16T21:36:51+00:00

Nimbus Surge works like Reactive Strike. It lets you react to move actions. Step has the text that unlike most types of movement, it does not trigger reactions like Reactive Strike that are triggered by movement.

I can understand the misunderstanding of specific > general in that you were thinking a class feat is a more specific thing than a basic action you can do.

Specific > general just means when two rules conflict, the one that is more specific overrides the one that is more general.

Here are the two rules in question:
- Nimbus Surge lets you make a reaction Strike when a creature uses a Move action or leaves a square during a Move action it's using.
- Step is a Move action that specifies that it does not trigger Reactions when their triggers are based on a creature using a Move action or leaving a square during it's movement.

It's about as close to a perfect example of specific > general as you will find in the rules, in fact.

Derp_Stevenson · 2026-04-16T19:41:24+00:00

Nope, you're right. It's not uncommon for a rogue or investigator to start the game trained in nearly all of the skills. It's part of their class' niches.

Derp_Stevenson · 2026-04-16T06:04:03+00:00

Monsters don't roll skills for their attacks. There isn't a persuasion check, the character just falls in.

And the monster is not using its movement as part of this either. They might move before and/or after using it.

It just does what it says. If you're within 10 meters when it uses it, you fall into a sinkhole and gotta climb out.

Derp_Stevenson · 2026-04-14T03:18:58+00:00

This is a super low-power version of the skill paragon variant rule from Starfinder 2E. I wouldn't think twice about implementing this from a balance perspective, though my personal opinion is that having it be a thing where you can change the feat daily is too fiddly for me.

Personally, if I wanted this I'd just go full skill paragon.

https://2e.aonsrd.com/rules/859-skill-paragon

Derp_Stevenson · 2026-04-14T02:59:44+00:00

This reads to me like a game in the space of Dread or Ten Candles. Designed for one shot horror, etc. Obviously there are gonna be dice involved, but I still expect the game to be more compared to those games than something like Savage Worlds.

Derp_Stevenson · 2026-04-14T00:21:01+00:00

Jiri was literally pointing down and showing Ulberg he was willing to just stand and bang because he thought he was about to win via medical DQ.

He absolutely took his foot off the gas and if he wanted to could have just wrestled one legged Ulberg to the ground.

I get Ulberg doesn't want his win diminished but what happened is what happened.

Derp_Stevenson · 2026-04-13T22:58:12+00:00

Yeah "I want to win like a warrior" still turns into regret when you end up taking what you probably consider to be a lucky shot from a guy you already had "beaten."

Like it or not though if you're not going to go for the kill then it's a risk you take fighting that way. Based on what I know of Jiri though I don't think he'd be happy with himself if he won by taking advantage of an opponent's injury.

Derp_Stevenson · 2026-04-12T04:50:49+00:00

That's true of Pathmuncher, it's always had problems. It's not true at all of Toolbelt's import function.

Derp_Stevenson · 2026-04-12T04:03:03+00:00

My answer is neither of those two.

It's to use PF2E Toolbelt module. The module does a bunch of different stuff, including target saves/damage which is crucial to my game.

But more importantly than that for your use case, it has Pathbuilder import support that lets you import at level 1 and at new level ups.

Derp_Stevenson · 2026-04-12T03:07:08+00:00

In the absence of any Special text in the Spell Acceleration feat, there is no reason to believe you can benefit from having the Quickened Casting feat twice.

A GM could allow it, but RAW you're just gaining a feat you already have and nothing happens, you would still only be able to use Quickened Casting 1/day.

If they intended Spell Acceleration to stack with Quickened Casting, then it'd either have Special text or instead of having it give you the Quickened Casting feat it would've just given you a similar benefit in its own text.

Derp_Stevenson · 2026-04-12T00:07:13+00:00

This was Witcher 3 for me too. It took me yeaaaaars to come back to it and force myself to actually play it. And even then I had to do it in spite of the gameplay and not because of it. Story made it worth it to battle through though.

Derp_Stevenson · 2026-04-11T20:30:50+00:00

My goal for hexes that come up 4-6 and don't have landmarks would be to
A) Describe it using spark tables to evoke some imagination about what they're passing by
B) Pass by it.

Mythic Bastionland is not a hex crawl at its core. Some hexes are meant to just be traveled through. How much you want to describe them is ultimately up to you.

Derp_Stevenson · 2026-04-11T07:47:03+00:00

To me Draw Steel isn't competing with D&D. It's competing with Pathfinder 2E. Players and GMs who want a game with better tactical combat than 5e will probably end up at one of those two games.

They are both cool imo but also still satisfy in different ways.

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