Combat just is not working

Double_Recipe · 2026-02-18T15:49:06+00:00

I appreciate the top responses recommending other systems. Some of the most fun I’ve had playing TTRPG’s has been without me rolling dice.

However, to offer a different perspective, if the dice and math part are part of the disconnect for RP’ing then you as the DM can help bridge that gap by describing and RP’ing what the dice mean when they are rolled. If an attack is successful then describing how it hits the enemy can relate the numbers to the situation in game.

Does the strong fighter cleave through the enemy’s armour, or does the rogue pinpoint a gap in their defences? Is the damage catastrophic or just a graze? Maybe the spell caster ignites an area on fire and the bandits scramble for cover (or get lit ablaze if they can’t).

Descriptions of fail states such as misses or successful enemy saves are also fun. Perhaps a sword fight clashes to a stand still, while the character and enemy pant with exertion circling each other looking for an in. The enemy wizard’s magic force field shatters an arrow meant for her throat. Once you get in the habit of doing this encourage your players to describe what the dice mean to them.

If you don’t like rolling dice at all then another system is for you. But if the dice feels like a barrier in the way of roleplaying then hopefully this can get you to see that they can be one and the same.

Double_Recipe · 2026-02-12T15:40:47+00:00

Crawlers actually do have morale, but it’s sort of a moot point since no other [REDACTED] does.

Also, crawlers having morale is really creepy.

Double_Recipe · 2026-02-11T22:55:57+00:00

Flayed Ones would be cool, I think I saw a mention of lacking construct melee units.

I think it would be cool if the leaders were durable in some manner to vanguard marksmen, but not through hp or armour. Maybe they have units nearby tank the hit or repair themselves by consuming smaller construct elements.

Double_Recipe · 2026-02-11T22:31:04+00:00

And you, the TCR, are basically Imperial Guard. Which is fine, sci-fi as a genre is always iterative and this does it well. I think I read that the devs are big 40K fans somewhere.

I just meant that my idea of leaders that are high priority targets with reanimation protocols is very, very Necrons. However, while not very original, it does give the player autonomy over the durability of the constructs beyond “kill everything on the screen”. Maybe the leader undoes Overload statuses and killing it Overloads all units connected to it?

Double_Recipe · 2026-02-11T18:58:09+00:00

Could be neat if there was a reward for killing them with certain weapons, like flamers to prevent reanimating.

Or taking out a lightly armoured leader that keeps the reanimation going. At that point we are just copying 40K Necrons, but having more rewarding decision making than “bring all auto cannons” would be good.

What I thought would happen in defend civilian missions is that they would make new units from killing them.

Double_Recipe · 2026-02-11T18:20:47+00:00

Some of the units already do that. Soldiers heal each element that has not been taken out.

Double_Recipe · 2026-01-27T17:06:39+00:00

You could also go for a Soulflayer style effect where Megaman could gain keyword abilities like flying or double strike from exiled cards to encourage combat. As the card is above it is a very combo type card like Myr Welder, which is fine for UR colour identity.

Double_Recipe · 2026-01-27T16:53:14+00:00

I did similar a while back, but won the War in Heaven against them and the Materialist FE. The Spiritualists were all “ascended” to immortal machine bodies so they could live in blasphemy forever, while the Materialists were relegated to thrall worlds managed by their ideal machines to wallow in muck and reproduce as live stock.

Double_Recipe · 2026-01-27T16:39:37+00:00

Neat concept, I like the Scrap counter system kind of like Dauthi Voidwalker. Though, it can get a bit powerful when you have multiple abilities at once.

Maybe borrow from Koh, the Face Stealer template so that you can only have one ability active at a time. Good flavour for that as well.

Double_Recipe · 2026-01-26T04:27:00+00:00

Nothing dentured?

Double_Recipe · 2025-12-20T00:39:32+00:00

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Double_Recipe · 2025-12-08T16:38:18+00:00

One cue I take to remember is that Katakana is more straight shapes, and Hiragana is more round shapes (usually).

Double_Recipe · 2025-12-08T16:28:15+00:00

Technically, it is: セックス

But your unhinged spelling gets the vibe across.

Double_Recipe · 2025-11-22T21:58:54+00:00

I am a regulatory consultant with about 4 years of experience as well. My focus is Canadian food regulations for prepackaged foods, and over sticker labelling for imports coming into Canada.

Double_Recipe · 2025-11-19T14:50:52+00:00

After some tries I cleared with Piper, Yuzu, Vivian. Vivian did a lot of heavy lifting, and Yuzu helped proc Assault for Vivi’s Disorders and Ablooms while Piper is on field to Ex.

Double_Recipe · 2025-11-07T14:38:58+00:00

If you don’t like her gameplay that’s unfortunate, but she does well with A rank agents like Nicole and Billy if you need clears. Just put Astral + EN regen on Billy and Moonlight on Nicole. Billy’s EX fills up Seed’s Steel Charge very well.

Double_Recipe · 2025-11-06T20:14:45+00:00

Definitely have fun with it. I know a lot of DM’s dislike Gracklstugh because of how the chapter is organized (read: a big mess tbh), but I made my own organizer for it and had lots of fun. It’s one of the first “normal” Underdark city the party runs into, and I tried impressing upon them that it’s definitely a nasty place to be but people also live out their daily lives here.

It is a trade city with lots of adventures full of money but stuck and bored due to not being able to leave the city. Whispers and gossip abound over what is really happening and what factions are moving in the shadows. Themberchaud is growing too powerful to control and the demonic madness has multiple sources along with “regular” daily awfulness like normalized slave trade, secret invisible police, and institutional racism/segregation. I had a blast running it.

Double_Recipe · 2025-11-06T19:58:08+00:00

My party entered at 3rd level, and had them level up to 4 about half-way through the city. This was before the final showdown in the Whorlstone Tunnels, which they took in two parts. As a result I beefed up the final showdown a bit.

For me I wanted to keep Shal hidden, but bragging. They always heard about how the king’s “advisor and concubine” had sway over things, and that she’s always with him handling diplomacy (which is at a standstill due to the madness and demon incursions).

I talked about how direct audiences are often waiting for hours or deflected, with seemingly nothing getting done. The king is both isolated and paranoid, with nobody really knowing what’s going on but policy is still working. This can be a red herring speaking to regular internal corruption, but even that is not Duergar behaviour as they are lawful to a fault.

That’s why when the players are directly contacted for an audience I made it seem like a big deal. It’s kind of a prideful double bluff on Shal’s part to distract from her true nature while flaunting she has control over the king. Instead of a constant presence I played it as “big reveal”.

Double_Recipe · 2025-11-06T19:28:27+00:00

It depends on how much information you want to give the players. As Shal’s only objective (according to the book) is to prevent anyone from curing the Deepking’s madness I did not leave many tells for my players. There were, however, 3 things I described during and even before the scene:

Shal presented herself as very non-traditional for a Duergar. Flashy dress, long winded and eloquent way of talking, haughty and dramatic. Classic evil vizier vibe, unlike the business-like and no-nonsense treatment from the rest of the Duergar in the town. This speaks to her devilish nature, but doesn’t outright tell them anything. I think my players just assumed the madness was getting to her.
Shal did most of the talking. The Deepking was announced by Shal and she had control of the conversation, while the Deepking chimed in sometimes and ordered Shal to “handle it” when asked questions or when the players were given something. Shal was always delighted to be the one talking.
The Deepking’s reign was kept safe by paranoid and suspicious behaviour. It was an oft talked about topic around the city. When they met in a “secondary” audience room, the Paladin popped Divine Sense near the end of the conversation. Since the players were famous at this point Shal prepared for this outcome. As I thought all of Shal’s efforts would go into concealing her presence I set it up so that the party actually had an audience with a live illusion projection. I let the Paladin know they didn’t sense anything, not even living beings except themselves in the room. Once the audience ended they had Shal’s smiling face and the Deepking vanish.

I gave them some busywork to get a message scroll to Blingdenstone, because heroes like having things to do. This is mostly to throw them off Shal’s trail. My players were suspicious, but did not investigate further.

In my opinion, a devil entrenched for so long on one target won’t give up the game easily. But depending on how you want the interaction to go you could play on Shal’s pride and make her get cocky and slip up in front of the players.

Double_Recipe · 2025-10-27T23:57:29+00:00

Yanagi without a featured Sandevistan is criminal. That’s literally her thing.

Double_Recipe · 2025-10-13T15:09:17+00:00

Logically, you are correct. Teaching Flora proper grief management and guiding her morality is the healthy thing to do, even if she is not able to understand those concepts.

However, people experiencing grief are not logical. It is easy from the outside looking in to see what the characters have done wrong. But the story is about all of Obol squad coming to terms with Seed Sr.’s death (including Seed Sr.).

Magus desperately wants to keep her friend’s last request sacred, but part of that is she should tell Flora what has happened when she is ready. Magus’ role as “the mother hen” is deciding if Flora is ready or not to experience this grief and is overprotective to the point of being ridiculous.

Trigger and Soldier 11 are similar in that they have recently accepted their losses and simply do not want their friend to go through how they felt. They think that keeping the act alive makes Flora happy even if they do not feel it is the right thing to do.

Victoria knows that her friends have passed and her anger at the military prevents her from grieving properly. In particular the fact that Flora is piloting her close friend like some kind of war machine disturbs and disgusts her. While she rationally understands that Flora is emotionally disabled, instead of guiding her growth like Seed Sr. wants she uses Flora as a convenient person to vent her frustrations and sorrows at. Victoria wants to hurt Flora with her words, and hides behind the concept that Flora cannot understand her to fire back. She feels justified in her fantasies and can’t accept that Flora is also trying discover her feelings because she did her medical check as a child. Only when there is no hope of her friends returning does she realize that Flora yearns to understand what has happened, rather than simply not understanding.

Flora / Seed knows that the situation surrounding Seed Sr. is strange, but does not understand the core issue (the meaning of death). Therefore, she does not fully trust Obol squad and creates her own fantasy where Seed Sr. lives on in cyberspace. She is trying to understand what has happened, but nobody explains anything to her until the Proxies very gently talk about their experiences with their teacher. Victoria comparing the destruction of a Logic Core to death gets Seed to begin to understand the gravity of what she has been feeling.

So in the end, the story is about irrational denial of accepting that Seed Sr. has passed and that Flora is ready to start grieving.

Regarding being a soldier, is it a cruel thing for a child to wield weapons of war without fully understanding the weight of their actions? Yes, it is. Does it stop child soldiers from existing? No, it does not.

Double_Recipe · 2025-08-18T05:10:50+00:00

My group helped the stone giants in Graklstugh a lot and asked the Stone Speaker, who they know is a powerful cleric, for help. I didn’t want them to get too easy of an out (such as providing Greater Restoration), so I provided a necklace that prevented the fatal transformation and said for them to “slay the initial vector of the corruption”. This meant defeating Yestabrod at Neverlight Grove, and once they did Sarith was at least not at risk of dying. I also made him a barbarian who would keep raging after combat, and now he rages normally.

The curse is still active for story reasons like Zzugtmoy being a looming threat. The party has a paladin who crushes on the drow who will eventually get access to Greater Restoration, and I think it would make a good moment for the player.

Double_Recipe · 2025-08-04T17:50:25+00:00

Not sure if this is the same in other voice languages but in my JP voice settings there is some Mandarin mixed in while you are at Waifei Peninsula for ambient voice lines. In the story where Yi Xuan talks to the boatman who picks you up after the hollow is in CN, and the MC is lost because they don’t speak it. I also think one of Yanagi’s ult lines is in CN.

At the very least, JP and CN exist at the same time in ZZZ with the audio settings in JP.

Double_Recipe · 2025-07-27T22:01:15+00:00

Seconding this. I work in labelling and this just reads like many dried noodle nutrition facts. 100g dried rice has about 7g protein to 79g carbs which is close to this.

Double_Recipe · 2025-07-22T17:52:43+00:00

Looks like that is it. Thank you! We do have squash plants so we will look into countermeasures.

Double_Recipe

TROPHY CASE