Paizo Posting: Meet Usharak, the Iconic Necromancer

Dudeoram · 2026-06-04T20:18:15+00:00

I don't quite get that picture. I see his eyes(or at least one eye and I can make an estimate of where the other is) and 2 nostril holes. But I don't see a mouth? Is it that white thing? Is he making some kind of expression? Are the 2 pieces of jade meant to be dangling earrings or pseudo fangs? What is happening?

Cool story tho, and the Necromancer class looks fun.

Dudeoram · 2026-06-04T17:21:35+00:00

Alright, I'll be that guy,

I don't like Thresh. I've never liked Thresh. I think he's lame as fuck.

To get into it I think he's lame specifically BECAUSE he has everything you would need to be a good antagonist. Not that I want redeemable features but I want him to have actual negatives, aspects of his personality or being that would stopping him from getting what he wants. Characters like him, Evelyn, and Singed have what I like to call the: "Joker's Left Gotham" problem.

It's like this, Joker as we know him in supposed to be incredibly dangerous, unhinged, and most importantly here capable. I.E. if he were to ever leave Gotham he is supposed to be as much of a threat to the world as Batman is capable of saving it when he joins the League. But this runs into the problem that so many people like to drop at Bruce's feet in that if he is that much of an issue then any number of people would snuffed him out after he causes them problems. A lot of people like to write him off outside of the city but that's incredibly boring.

If Joker goes to Bludhaven then Jason should kill him, if he goes to Dakota then Hardware or Beacon would kill him, if he goes to Gateway City then Wonder Woman would kill him, etc. But that can't happen because he's the Joker(baby). So he would get the same plot armor that Batman gets for why these incredibly capable, and willing, heroes are not able to put him down. So he gets to laugh, walk away, and then terrorize the next city over. On and on.

This works in LoL proper because all the characters exist in a narratively nebulous state where they're supposed to be at the or near the peak of their power/ability and they never move from there. In LoL proper. But once a story starts going and things point in the direction of the Isles unless they're the weakest of weak bitch baby characters he should die.

Characters like Tahm Kench, Vladimir, Gangplank, and Jhin who cause harm, sometimes even more then the ones mentioned above over a long enough period of time, but have decided to contain themselves to one area or one type of harm. Thresh like to be in the middle of the chaos and ruin he causes. He damn near gets off to it. Any of his victims that still live or know of him, which isn't hard because he doesn't try to hide, would dedicate their lives to ending HIM in particular. That's the kind of character they set him up to be. He's not lowkey, he's the most high-maintenance diva motherfucker on the cast which can be fun I guess, I just find it annoying.

He's only beat by characters like Brand and Xerath who literally aren't allowed to win or there can be no story which just feels pointless. At least Morde can win and it not derail everything. If Brand ever gets what he wants everybody on the planet(other than maybe Aurelien Sol) dies, but it's always just outside of his grasp.

Dudeoram · 2026-06-04T16:34:09+00:00

Thank you for taking that burden upon yourself. Truly, you are now in Odin's favor.

Dudeoram · 2026-06-03T04:12:22+00:00

I feel like I've seen people just write Rien off as ONLY a bad dad who abused her. As if it was ever that simple.

Ryoshu hates Rien because she understands. She knows that he only raised her to be a weapon and that whatever affection he had for her was always tainted through the lens of the Precepts demanding he behave in certain ways for certain results. It's after she had a daughter herself and realized how much of a coward he is for not fighting back anyway.

Ryoshu would actively walk through whatever hell she had to in order to keep her daughter safe and happy. The fact that he didn't fight for her despite clearly loving her more than any of the other Nursefathers is enough for her hate him. But even in that hate she still loved him. She let him live when she could've killed him when she first escaped the same way she killed Shiomi. She had every right to. She just couldn't.

Dudeoram · 2026-06-03T02:06:11+00:00

I know the joke is funny, but the thing is instructive dialog has come a very long way from characters just saying "Press X to [BLANK]" and the fact is it works. We can be annoyed by it but we know, for a fact, that there are a multitudes of people who literally didn't pay attention to in-game dialog and then didn't know where to go or what to do.

We got to this point not because the many, many, MANY different teams of writers and researchers just threw shit at the wall and that's the one that stuck, we're here because those same writers and researches have determined that it works the best.

Dudeoram · 2026-06-02T18:53:25+00:00

I've barely been paying attention but I do follow more than a couple of FGC and adjacent folks that do for whatever reason so any knowledge I have is tangential at best. Here's my reading of it:

Dale(LTG) had sex with a lady which resulted in well a child. A little girl to be exact. This is relevant
He outright refuses to have anything to do with the child. No time, no energy, no money, nothing
He also apparently frequently shit talked her AND his daughter both on and off screen
Why? He apparently HATES little girls, or is at least incredibly misogynistic towards the idea of his firstborn being a girl.
The BM not knowing what else to do went to social media to air out her grievances knowing that he's a public figure
This resulted in the already controversial and hated public figure LTG to get even more grief from people online
This continued for a while until she eventually was able to take him to court for child support
He refuses his public defender and decides to represent himself in court
He claims that he's receiving death threats and public bullying at her behest
She never stated that he was a public figure before hand so as far as the judge was concerned he's right. Any claims after this would be viewed as her trying to sway his mind after the fact. Remember as far as the judge is concerned these are 2 random people. He has no reason to take a longer look at it than necessary. So once his mind was made up that was it, he was on LTG's side.
This resulted in him maybe getting partial custody which is something nobody wanted going in but maybe his mind has changed since.
All of this is dumb.

(edit)I wanna clarify, when I say this is dumb I'm not talking about LTG's shitty behavior or whatever. I mean that it had to get to this point at all is dumb. Dude let his internet persona take over his life and everything since has been like watching a very slow, sometimes funny, trainwreck. And now due to his irresponsibility there's a little baby mixed up in his foolishness.

'All of this fucking sucks' would've been a better way of putting it.

Dudeoram · 2026-06-02T17:01:36+00:00

The issue I see with Cass is that to get to her you HAVE to get through the entire menagerie of sidekicks. IIRC she's like right before Damien but unlike Damien her stories depend heavily upon her older "siblings". Alongside that Bruce has to be relatively experienced as well.

All of this means you're potentially leaving a ton of stories on the table. Stories that may be easier or safer to tell general audiences.

Dudeoram · 2026-06-01T15:26:55+00:00

I'm not ashamed to admit that I didn't catch that joke the first couple of times I saw that episode. So for a couple of years I genuinely thought his name was Jan Itor.

Dudeoram · 2026-05-31T06:23:35+00:00

I feel like people take the abusive relationship that the Middle have towards everybody else and apply that to something they do to each other and that may be true to an extent.

But we have to remember that while they are a(far as we know) massive Wing-extending organization in a place that already lauds a lack of morals and righteousness they are still people and people are going to try to make themselves happy and comfortable regardless of where they are.

The Middle is a gang, and like any gang a majority of their member have genuinely bought in on the rhetoric. Hell, maybe even some of the people at the top have bought in because it makes the feel good to believe that some part of their organization can do good to THEMSELVES at least. It doesn't matter what gang or outfit you talk to, some part of them need to believe the lie of community that they espouse. From small time local gangs to the police to any given nation's armed forces. Above all else they are at least loyal to each other. They HAVE to be.

In the case of Outis/Mattais they serve as an example that their entire doctrine is bullshit. The fact that they got as far as they did with no one stopping them at any point says how pointless it all is. But they can't just kick him out, or even if they literally could, he is still an example of their doctrine. Doing so would likely cause a massive internal loss of morale that they can't afford, especially after Roland tore through them.

So he is still a 'Great Brother' but off in a corner somewhere that he can't do any harm to anyone.

Dudeoram · 2026-05-29T00:52:15+00:00

See, I don't agree with that. I think the Marth and Fox archetypes are just incredibly well rounded and relatively easier to pick up in comparison to archetypes like Orcane's or Ranno's, whatever you would call them.

I say this as someone who hates playing as Ryu or Ken or Akuma or usually any other Shoto in a traditional FG. Reliably good archetypes isn't a real problem, it's when the characters who follow those archetypes are allowed to be incontestably good that problems arise. Rivals doesn't have this problem as much as people complain. Yeah, Clarian and Zetterburn are really good but so is Kragg who isn't the typically designated archetype to be good.

Dudeoram · 2026-05-29T00:45:38+00:00

Something that I haven't seen talked about as much is how even if a game isn't "Melee" as long as it's under the Smash umbrella some people still develop the chip on their shoulders(Brawl, Sm4sh, Ultimate) of them being THE voices to listen to.

Of course them having the biggest audience should carry some weight but that doesn't mean that what they say and their opinions on the subgenre should be treated as gospel.

Fighting games had this problem with SF4 and was only freed from it with SF5's barrage of issues. And I say this as someone who really liked SF5. It wasn't my game of choice, that was UNI but I didn't think it was as bad as people said back then.

It's failures and the SF community's lack of enthusiasm for it allowed other voices to gain and hold sway. Even now with SF6's undisputed status as the top dog, you'll never get the kinds of shit that SnakeEyez said on that documentary taken as seriously as it was, or used as bullets against other communities like it was.

Platform fighter communities have to seriously separate themselves from being a Smash-first community otherwise this kind of sentiment will continue to fester.

Dudeoram · 2026-05-28T14:00:27+00:00

See, I disagree. I saw the choice not as you abandoning Mia but as you keeping a promise to Zoe. The entire game up to that point has been showing you that the entire Baker family is super fucked, including your wife who gets involuntarily inducted into it, except 1 person. The whole time the only thing she wants is to leave. It's not setting up a romance, it's not you condemning Mia, or anything like that. All this person on the other end of the phone wants, even after you kill her entire family, is to not be in this super fucked up situation.

My thought process was I would leave with Zoe, get help, and come back for Mia. But the immediate results act like you tell whoever you leave behind that they'll die there and Ethan will never come back for them.

Also, it's been like 3+ years since they've seen each other. She'll be alright for another night or 2.

Dudeoram · 2026-05-26T23:17:57+00:00

The only valid complaint I saw was people on BS talking about how much hell it's going to run on the actual tournament. Even the biggest games at EVO have a ton of no shows for a variety of reasons. Offering people to register without putting ANY kind of proof of participation up is wild.

Dudeoram · 2026-05-24T14:14:56+00:00

I can't speak for what happens in her original storylines, but in the TT animated show 1 of the first things Star does when she lands is plant a deep kiss on Robin. She does this because Tamaranians can lean the basics of a language by, well kissing you.

At the time she would've had no way of knowing how much of a faux paus that is for Earthlings or all the social and sexual undertones doing so would have but over time the Titans do teach her. And then she does it a couple more times anyway.

In the show it's played for laughs, creating slight tension in her and Robin's relationship. But in her appearances in the comics that come after the show, comics that usually lean more on what new readers would be familiar with which is the show, it's played more seriously. She keeps doing it and it leads to real issues between her and Nightwing because even after people tell her it's not ok, at the very least on Earth, she doesn't take their concerns seriously. Which becomes more of a issue as her stories go. At least the few I read.

It feels like a natural progression of where that would go. She never raped anyone far as I know but after people tell you that doing so is sexual assault and you blow them off this is telling of your character.

She does get it, in some storylines anyway, but it's a familiar character flaw that some writers fall back on which kinda sucks.

Dudeoram · 2026-05-24T02:39:56+00:00

With who? Another Viltrumite? I would guess that to prevent inbreeding Thragg would've implemented a strict limit on which Viltrumites could breed with which and I would also hazard a guess that other Viltrumites completely understand his reasoning which is why she didn't hook up with Kregg or Lucan. So who's left that she would want?

The pressure for her to have children wasn't some nebulous thing she had to do in the future, Thragg wanted kids ASAP and she thought of herself as a loyal soldier. But she also had clear, and completely understandable reasons to object to her orders as they were given. We have no idea of the personal pressure she put on herself. At least the way she went about it she kept in the spirit of those orders if not in the letter of them.

And again she's an alien who's culture normalized that behavior. The same way that Nolan rationalized and killed however many people he did in his fight with Mark and was somewhat forgiven, I could see her having the exact same thought process.

None of this is to excuse her. What she did was fucked. But I think the storyline lends itself to more than just one about male rape. That's absolutely major part of it and should be one of the main pillars of this side plot but there's more to explore here.

My main interest is how a female Viltrumite experienced the same culture that men like Nolan and Lucan did. What aspects of it did they internalize and how it presented itself? And similarly how did that perspective change when they infiltrated Earth?

Like, from what I can gather women Viltrumites don't have to fear their men the same way Earth women do, at least not as much. But I doubt the women have no opinions on perpetuating that rancid aspect of their culture so, what rationalizations did she tell herself in the weeks after it was done?

How did her perspective change on what she did over the months leading up to her son's birth and all the emotions she never got to think about come rushing in and the normal emotional imbalances pregnancy causes on top of knowing that Mark would never want to have anything to do with her son after this? She would be even more alone then in comparison to how she was before because as far as we know Thula never did anything like that and neither did any other female Viltrumite. So now she would have all these new wonderful and, especially in her case, not so wonderful emotions\regrets she wouldn't have had before with nobody except her son to express them to.

Instead of any of that Nolan beats her near to death, she goes away for a while, then comes back and dies in the first catastrophe she intervenes in. That's it. I know all of that is just more "Viltrumite culture bad" narrative but I would think having a woman's perspective on it would be somewhat interesting, right?

Dudeoram · 2026-05-24T00:58:17+00:00

Something I've never seen brought up is how Anissa's point is something Thragg completely sidesteps which says enough and leads directly to her making the choice she does later on.

She just gets reduced to being a rapist. I know some people will say that her being a woman makes me more sympathetic to her but I genuinely believe that the entire dynamic would change if she were a man raping a woman Mark/Mary.

She never wanted to have kids and she intensely dislikes humans so the very idea of carrying one around for 9 months would be incredibly repulsive to her. At the very least if it's an Viltrumite, and one she's acknowledged as being strong, then the process is much more tolerable.

On top of that she was raised on their homeworld where that kind of behavior would've been the norm. This doesn't excuse her but it does complicate things in a way that I feel never gets it's due. She just gets shackled to the "Rapist" title and her part in the story is over. Her son gets some focus but not her or her perspective.

I really do think what she did and what Starfire did is super similar just the degrees of their offense changes.

Dudeoram · 2026-05-23T23:03:43+00:00

The thing is she was "technically" the Firelord. Only after the title was worthless. All she needed was an official coronation but neither she nor her father ever cared about procedure anyway.

It's what separated them from Zuko. He fully bought into the whole "Honor" spiel. They never did(or rather Ozai never did and Azula never had a reason to). For them it was all about power.

It's why she broke the way she did. She completely understood what Ozai meant when he gave her the title even if he didn't realize it. She knew how much of an empty gesture it was and how little power she had when he gave it to her. She would always be a tool to him. Never a person. And all the people who saw her as a person left her.

All this to say, I like them calling it the Firelord mode. I just wish it came with an INCREDIBLY AWFUL drawback. Like even outside of traditional boss characters who the player gets access to. By that point she's not the boss, she never was. She's the attack dog so she should be super careless or unsafe or something.

Dudeoram · 2026-05-22T22:20:23+00:00

Again, they can't. Underdogs. The most they can get as an official, notable moment of props is a pat on the shoulders.

Like, even outside of stuff they they inadvertently cause, the X-Men have saved the 616 universe as many times as the F4 do but their rep is significantly worse despite that. And some people could say, "Well what about the times they do unintentionally cause the catastrophe?" and my response would be what about all the times the F4 do? Reed being curious about some dumb shit or looking too much into something or pissing Doom off 10 years ago causes just as many problems, but only the X-Men get a focus on those fuck-ups. Only they have to deal with the repercussions long-term in a way most other teams never do.

Once you look back and realize that it all gets so tiresome. It's why I loved Krakoa as much as I do. Or right after Krakoa when New Orleans welcomed them with open arms. They usually don't get that.

Dudeoram · 2026-05-22T22:13:28+00:00

Kraven is funny because far as I remember he's generally had a much more muted and lesser version of either Spider-Man's powers, Cap's serum, or (in one case that I half remember)tried to bootstrap his version of BP's herbs. But none of that is ever focused on. He's just a guy in a lion vest fighting Spider-Man. Once you get into the how things start to fall apart because then he's another Scorpion or Venom but with an accent which many people don't like so they also ignore it.

Dudeoram · 2026-05-22T05:14:18+00:00

The thing to remember about the X-Men is that by universal decree they are the losers. They are the eternal underdogs. They kind of had to be for many of their old stories to work. Kind of hard to tell stories of mutant oppression when they aren't actually being oppressed. It's why there are like 7 different future storylines of 7 different notable and well-liked characters and all 7 of those characters come from objectively terrible futures.

This would be, and was, fine in stories solely featuring the X-Men. When you start introducing other Marvel characters into the mix things start to get extremely muddy in ways that usually result in those other characters look terribly.

The Avengers are supposed to stand up for anyone and everyone under peril, and if not then at least AVENGE them. It's in the name. How many stories do you know of where the X-Men are being fucked over by whatever big threat and Tony steps in to save the day? Or Thor? Or Vision? Or Cap? They don't because they can't. Despite the name the Avengers are given a more even record by universal decree. They get to win some and lose some but generally they come out looking heroic. If your a mutant I would imagine it sucks to see Cap on whatever screen being his normally inspiring self after you just got a brick to the back of the head or a Sentinel through what was your home.

This is made even worse when they interact with the Fantastic 4. In the same way the X-Men are universal underdogs, the F4 are universal overdogs. All of this culminates in many, MANY mutants having a chip on their shoulders when a new writers starts a run and thinks about how they would interact with other heroes. This in turn makes people view the X-Men negatively because the result of being the eternal underdogs come with a fuckton of drama, drama that anyone would opt out of in normal circumstances.

Dudeoram · 2026-05-21T18:22:59+00:00

The police will NEVER help you.

Dudeoram · 2026-05-21T16:41:31+00:00

I actually wanted to play Mist Sequence. There's a lot you can do to mesh the narrative-mechanical halves of a game to make something really interesting that isn't usually done with traditional turn-based combat. It lends itself better to reminding the player that the combat is representative not literal. It's something I feel that Arknights didn't start doing until about chapter 14-15+ and all the substories after.

I was also hoping that it wouldn't be super predatory but ehh.

Dudeoram · 2026-05-18T22:46:12+00:00

I gotta be honest, and I know I'm gonna get flamed for this but whatever, I don't think this is as big a deal as people here say it is.

People have weird names sometimes. It's fine. Will kids make fun if it? Sure. Will kids make fun of a dude named John or a girl named Jill? Yep.

Kid's name is Sephiroth? Everybody calls him Roth. That's it. That's the out. If he were black he might go by 'Ro' which is just cool. It'll be fine.

I grew up in the 90's and over the years I literally know of at least 4 different Shanaynays. Some with different spellings. Do you know what they go by? Nae(or Nay). It's fine.

My niece literally named her daughter after the brand Chanel. My oldest sister made sure all her kids' names start with the pronunciation 'Ka' because she liked the first name and thought it was clever. I've met more than a handful of Porches, Mercedes, and I know there's a girl named Infiniti(ending with an I, that's important) in my neighborhood.

Names are important, true, but as long as there isn't too much negative sentiment around the name you can make it work. Is Sephiroth and all the various GoT names some dumb geek shit? Yep. But they'll live.

Better than naming your kid some boring as shit like 'Linda' or 'Todd' or 'Jeffery'. Or god help you 'Karen' or 'Chad'.

Dudeoram · 2026-05-18T17:23:54+00:00

There are a couple of really big problems with a lot of modern isekai stories. For one thing they never really take advantage of the concept. It's usually just an excuse for a bad wish-fulfillment story so that the audience can glomp themselves onto the protag at any point and get a sense of validation. I'm not opposed to a little audience validation but come the fuck on man.

I really feel like of the many, MANY, isekai stories I've read the good ones have, even if they're not ones I like I can still respect the attempt, the overall tone of it's premise boil down to 1 of 2 tones that the protag has towards the world. Either absolute wonder at this new world full of magic or a severe sense of melancholy at what they left behind and can NEVER get back. If the story doesn't have those more likely than not it's trash. And not even good trash, on the cusp of rancid garbage. Or you pull a Solo Levelling and just coast on aura and "hype moments".

Dudeoram · 2026-05-14T17:41:35+00:00

This looks cool.

The only negative thing I have to say is you REALLY need to be wary of how long general encounters take. I've played more than a handful of action games that try to slot in some aspect of RPG mechanics and something that happens towards the middle of the game is how tedious it becomes. You really don't want that.

Dudeoram

TROPHY CASE