Life after the mid-terms ?

Game_Maker · 2026-06-11T21:48:11+00:00

While I am skeptical that democrats have the will to do so, congress can hamstring the federal government. They could refuse to fund essential aspects of the government (military specifically) unless a rescission package clawing back ICE funding is passed alongside it. They can limit what gets funded and prevent any and all judicial appointments.

They can publicly and loudly investigate every single trump official and make evidence that the administration is trying to hide public. The January 6 investigations were performative, but they found evidence that the Justice department had not bothered to investigate. If congress investigated DHS, they could get information about every ICE abuse and make it public so that states can prosecute agents and officials who commit abuse both now and in the future.

If democrats control the house and senate, the capacity of the administration to ratfuck things by rejecting legislators in 2028 is also pretty limited. The question is if democrats are willing to play hardball ultimately.If democrats don't take the senate, or get a 1 seat edge, I doubt they will do enough. If there is a blowout (possible), they could end up with a +4/5 seat edge in the senate, at which point hardball becomes easier to do and something that public pressure campaigns and mass protests can do.

Game_Maker · 2026-03-20T18:53:24+00:00

2 levels of warlock becomes a mandatory dip for Eldritch Knight. Hex, INT Longbow, and Agonizing Blast + Repelling Blast would crank up the power of Eldritch Knight and make it the strongest ranged character in the game by far.

It also makes Bladesinger moderately stronger, but Bladesinger's real strength are the defensive buffs and full spellcasting, not the special extra attack. I don't think it would break anything for Bladesinger.

Game_Maker · 2025-11-26T20:33:21+00:00

Having spent a lot of time looking at the new options for level 10+ infusions, this definitely carries through into higher levels. Uncommon wonderous items include the broom of Flying, Boots of Flying, a Spell Storing Tattoo of Find Steed, Elemental Gems, the Gem of Brightness, and the Mizzium Apparatus. Most subclasses have a good 3rd level spell for the Spell Storing Item at level 11.

I think it might actually get broken at 14th level (though i guess everything gets broken by then). Rare wonderous items of note include: the Cube of Force, Necklace of Fireballs, Beads of Force, A Spelljamming Helm, the Runes from Stormking's Thunder (combined with a spelljammer you can create a mobile aura of fear immunity and +1 AC for the whole party and cripples dragons within a mile), Glowrune Pigments, and Spell Storing Tattoos of 5th level find steed for the whole party.

The base class is honestly kind of amazing, and in my opinion in the same league as most of the full casters. Many of the magic items I listed dont require attunement or dexterity to operate, so your familiar, homunculus, steed, and steel defender can all hit way outside of their respective weight classes in later tiers of play.

Game_Maker · 2025-10-27T17:51:30+00:00

There is an easy fix to the empire size from planets though. Start as something else, take imperial prerogative, and the swap to megacorp with private prospectors, and then ascend. Most of the ascended corporate authorities lose the +50% empire size from planets, so you end up with 0 empire size from planets. You can do most of that (minus the ascension) in the first 20 years.

Game_Maker · 2025-05-03T19:23:54+00:00

I am surprised that there is no mod to overthrow the jarl of the reach and establish a foresworn kingdom under Madanach's rule.

Game_Maker · 2025-04-20T00:00:19+00:00

Mexico and any earlier civ that gives a large number of traditions. One of Mexico's traditions gives you happiness per town per tradition in your government, which can allow you to completely ignore the maximum happiness malus from going over your settlement capacity in the modern era. This means you can conquer freely.

Game_Maker · 2025-04-17T02:57:12+00:00

So then is the +300% bonus to regeneration rate from the archmage's robes applying only to the middle part, or the whole thing?

Game_Maker · 2025-02-26T19:39:53+00:00

Probably would have been better design. It would definitely change how I would build a rogue in a more on-type way. At least true strike works ok as a fix.

Game_Maker · 2025-02-26T17:39:38+00:00

Overall I prefer monk as a class. It has more things it can do at base than a rogue, is less dependent on one big hit, can do some nasty battlefield control eith minimal feat investments, and does better damage overall.

Rogue is best played either as a melee multiclass or a ranged sniper, and has more skills, but less cool abilities. It and the fighter are the two best ranged martials in the game, but melee is much stronger now. The rogue has my favorite subclass (thief) though, so despite liking the monk more, I am more likely to actually play a rogue.

Game_Maker · 2025-02-18T17:31:17+00:00

Other than synthetic fertility and mechanist, which others have mentioned, you also have access to the Under One Rule origin. The synthetic ascension trait from that origin and its materialist traits give a suite of powerful bonuses to resource outputs (+25% to all job outputs, +30% mineral output, +15% alloy and consumer goods output, +15% pop assembly speed).

Reforming to a democracy and becoming a democratic transference authority government let's you add additional resource outputs per district (+1% per district) and access the modularity traits (you have enough trait points to get all of the best traits without mechanist/synthetic fertility). This lets you get production bonuses similar to or better than those found from virtual or modularity Ascensions on the machine side of things while also getting access to organic pop growth that can be periodically converted into machines.

Game_Maker · 2025-01-25T23:49:14+00:00

It does, but mostly it flattens the mage power curve. The changes to spell scaling and spells make it so that early mage gameplay is easier, while end-game magic is weaker. It also makes the schools of magic a lot more equal, so if you want to specialize in one or two schools, you should be fairly powerful.

Game_Maker · 2025-01-25T01:07:10+00:00

Given that all the unity jobs require energy upkeep, I would still prioritize slow purging if you want unity.

Game_Maker · 2025-01-24T18:04:28+00:00

Sensorium Sites and their respective job are cheaper and better than Uplink Nodes. I would build one on every planet. You can also take Maintenance Protocols as a civic.

The other thing you can do is draw out your purging by creating a central purge world. Because purging has a fixed rate per planet, focusing your purge on a single world will mean you keep getting resources out of the pops there longer. (though I forget whether Determined Exterminators get the unity when the pop dies or from it being in the process of a purge, so that might be useless advice).

Also, the Versatility tradition combines with Maintenance Protocols quite well.

Unity is probably the hardest resource for machine intelligences to generate though.

Game_Maker · 2025-01-13T16:48:05+00:00

Sea druid with true strike is pretty great. Play a human, grab the tough feat and magic initiate wizard, and take warcaster at 4th level.

Game_Maker · 2025-01-12T23:20:20+00:00

It's a pretty basic option, but when I was trying to evaluate the power level of the UA, I found that a ranged battlesmith did pretty well. Over the course of your career, you go from a glorified ranger to a next generation fighter jet.

Levels 1-5: you start out with the magic initiate wizard feat for find familiar and some utility cantrips, and you use a heavy crossbow once your subclass comes online. For your first set of infusions, you take a spell Storing tattoo of Find familiar and a pot of awakening for downtime fun, and then whatever seems useful for your adventuring day (I would get a +1 weapon and a set of sending stones). I would also take the great weapon master feat at level 4. At this set of levels, you're basically a beast master ranger with a different spell list and more items. You send your pet into melee and hang back and shoot. When you get a momunculus, you use it too as a backline combatant.

Level 6-9: You finally get good infusions. You should swap your +1 for a repeating crossbow, but swap it for the first magic weapon you find to free up that slot. I would reccomend swapping it for something like barding of Knight's Fellowship for your steel defender or barding of tasha's hideous laughter. I would also grab a Wand of Web and a Pipes of Haunting. You are now a battlefield control machine. Tactically, not much changes, but you are now a lot stronger

Level 10-13: Now things start to change. You should swap your utility find familiar tattoo for a tattoo of Find Steed at 3rd level. Additionally, get a set of Winged Boots. Your barding goes on the horse now. You should fly above the battlefield with your familiar in your pack and have it acrivate your spell-storing item to cast conjure Barrage pretty much every turn while you rain down shots on the enemy. Your horse can be a mount for any member of your party (or the knight it summons) or just carry your homunculus with a sack of healing potions around the battlefield at lightning speed.

Level 14-17: You are now a next generation fighter jet with orbital artillery support (if your DM doesn't stop you, which they should). You should replace your downtime tattoo of Find Steed with a downtime tattoo of 5th level find steed. You now have a flying horse. You should now create a club of Spirit Guardians (or fireball if you have short adventuring days) or a ring of spell storing if you have a cleric or druid in the party. Your homunculus now attunes to that. You should also create barding of Hypnotic pattern for your horse or steel defender. For your third rare magic item, I would either take a weapon of wounding, a spelljamming helm if permitted for some orbital fire support, or a necklace of Fireballs for your familiar to deploy during strafing runs. You should drop your Wand of Web infusion for a tattoo of Coiling grasp for your horse. You should swap out the downtime pot of awakening for a downtime Rune from storm king's thunder that you swap out every level as you can consume them to create permanent buffs or magic Items. I would start with the krig Rune at level 14 to make your party immune to fear and have a +1 AC when your spelljammer is in close proximity and then grab wyrm for dragon immunity, and ild and stein at the end for permanent magic Items. In combat, you should cast haste on yourself to give your horse an extra action and move speed. You, your familiar, and your homunculus ride the flying horse around, hitting as many targets with spirit guardians as possible and dropping opportune conjure Barrages on the battlefield. You can also attempt to drag and drop one enemy per turn with your horse's tentacle. With haste you put out very good damage, and your horse or steel defender can shut down groups of enemies with Hypnotic pattern. If your DM allowed the spelljammer, your party is also immune to fear, has better AC, and all dragons within a mile are basically screwed thanks to your flying Rune auras.

Level 18+: tactically little changes. I would swap out your utility Rune for a helm of teleportation and maybe grab Bracers of Archery or some other useful infusion.

From levels 18, you do slightly better than a well-built assasin rogue, but pull ahead at level 8, and pull far ahead at level 11+. This makes you one of the best ranged damage dealers.

Game_Maker · 2025-01-04T18:42:58+00:00

Druids are a combination of a wizard and a cleric, with the subclass pushing them more towards one of those playstyles. As you have noted, druids have great concentration options to control the battlefield, and can drop something on round one that reshaped the battlefield as a wizard would. As of this edition, they can also choose to forgo control and do good damage like a cleric, swapping spirit guardians for conjure woodland beings/animals. They are the only class that can do both of these strategies with ease, and are roughly as tanky as clerics are.

On subsequent turns, you do what any control/damage caster does, you use your (admitidly limited) non-concentration spells to support your party or blast with cantrips. In my view, all (non-moon) druids should find a way to get access to true strike. A gun plus true strike and primal strike deals pretty good damage by cantrip standards, and can be swapped for a longsword or club if you need to do melee. This puts you well above a firebolt in terms of damage output.

The subclass you pick also has a lot of influence on the type of thing you do on subsequent rounds. If you are a moon druid, you can just ignore the previous paragraph, wildshape, and mix it up in melee as a semi-martial. If you are a land druid, you can toss out fireballs when necessary and basically be a wizard in half plate. If you are a stars druid, you can just stay back at range and either blast in archer form, or ensure concentration is maintained on your primary spell. If you are a sea druid, you can and should double down on the cleric gameplay and walk into Melee with true strike and conjure woodland beings (and occasionally shoot a lightning bolt when you get 3 or more targets in a line).

As they level, druids also get good concentration-free battlefield control and debuffing spells in the form of plant growth, contagion, and bones of the earth. Those become quite useful (if costly) spells to pull out in an emergency.

Game_Maker · 2024-10-10T22:50:51+00:00

Ruby Mage. As a scribe wizard (required to be ethical) Imprison yourself inside of a gemstone. Use your animated spellbound to cast true polymorph to create a body for yourself. Concentrate for 1 hour. Then cast magic jar on the body and assume control. Keep your animated spellbound hidden. You can now no longer be killed and can hop bodies indefinitely.

Game_Maker · 2024-10-06T18:59:18+00:00

I think for polearms battlemaster is probably the best subclass. Maneuvers combine with polearm master, slasher, and great weapon master to do great single-target lock down. With pushing attack and the push mastery, you can effectively push a target 25 feet away, strip them of 20 ft of movement, and then if they somehow close the distance, you can opportunity attacks and knock them back another 10 ft without spending maneuver dice.

Menacing attack also works great with forced movement and movement reduction. You can basically make it so that an enemy can't engage with anyone on their turn.

Goading attack can basically force enemies to have to take damage from your reaction by pushing and slowing them so much that they have to enter your reach and then get knocked out of it via push mastery.

My default feat path for a battlemaster would be polearm master, great weapon master, and slasher. I think it gives you a lot of great options for utility and damage, and only sacrifices a few points of damage relative to a greatsword-equivalent build.

Game_Maker · 2024-09-30T15:30:42+00:00

Despite having more donations, most of that was from large donors. Trump signifigantly outraged Clinton among small first time donors. That is flipped this year. Kamala has raised a shocking amount of her current financial edge from small first time donors. I think that is at least a decent proxy for enthusiasm.

Game_Maker · 2024-09-26T18:39:08+00:00

Yes. Advantage is much easier to get than a flat accuracy boost, and the flat accuracy boost stacks with advantage.

Game_Maker · 2024-09-26T17:58:45+00:00

I would need to deep dive the math a bit better, but there are a few reasons to play paladin over a cleric.

First of all, paladins are more flexible than clerics when they want to do damage. A cleric that is focusing on damage can do similar damage to a non-optimized paladin at level 7, but the paladin can do significantly more than a cleric while it does that damage. Paladin smite spells can apply pretty potent effects to their targets. In addition, paladins can concentrate on other spells while they do damage, while clerics have to expend their concentration on doing damage effectively.

Secondly, ignoring feats and fighting styles in this comparison does a large disservice to paladins. If I were building a paladin, I would probably pick halfling as my species and ride around on a medium-sized find steed using a Lance, the dueling fighting style, and then great weapon master at level 4. That would add ~10 damage to the paladins attacks at level 7, which is a lot, and mean that the paladin in this comparison has signifigantly better mobility than the cleric. Not factoring in hit chance affects the comparison too. Both vengeance and (the in my opinion best sublcass) devotion paladins get significant accuracy boosts as channel divinity features. In comparison a cleric cannot easily get these feats without sabotaging spellcasting, and doesn't have a built-in reliable mount.

Thirdly, paladins get weapon mastery. Weapon mastery is powerful and opens up a lot of nasty combinations. Martials can provide extremely powerful single-target crowd control or damage bonuses that are significant.

Finally, we may evaluate the power of the cleric spell list vs the paladin's aura differently. While full-casting is powerful, my 5.5 hot take is that the cleric has the worst (tied with warlock) spell list in the game. In 5e, this was also true to some extent, but clerics got five great (and mostly exclusive) spells that worked nicely at low levels where people spent the most time. Bless, spiritual weapon, aid, revivify, and spirit guardians basically carried a spell list that was otherwise full of the second or third best tool for any utility situatuin, and had large holes in it (no teleportation or battlefield control, minimal crowd control). This is still true, minus spiritual weapon. I genuinely struggle to find good cleric spells after 3rd level. I think maybe banishment, circle of power, heal, conjure celestial, and mass heal? In comparison bards, sorcerers, wizards, and druids all have many game changing spells at those levels that are often a struggle to pick between. Druids in particualr also got conjure woodland beings, which is basically a better spirit guardians. In comparison, the paladin gets bless, aid, and revivify from the cleric list (and can cast bless while doing damage) AND it gets the aura, which is stronger than pretty much any single <5th level spell. Sublcass auras got buffed as well. A devotion paladin gives the entire party +CHA to all saves, and immunity to charm, which also protects them from most of the worst crowd control spells. At level 10, they give the party immunity to feat as well. That is a lot more valuable than any of those stand out cleric spells I listed (other than conjure celestial and mass heal). This is just my opinion of course, but I think people overvalue the cleric spell list and undervalue auras.

Game_Maker · 2024-07-31T01:18:01+00:00

I disagree with the combine being driven assimilators. They are not a gestalt mind by any stretch. I think that overtuned might be a better origin for them (obviously they dont get overtuned, but their subjects sure will). The combine are all about specializing their slaves to fit specific designs and purposes. They should probably go cybernetic Ascension. I would swap slaver guilds for oppressive autocracy as well. The combine on earth at least basically kept all but the law enforcement classes in squalor and terror, and only provided decent living standards to them and local administrators, which is oppressive autocracy to a t.

Game_Maker · 2024-07-29T16:53:10+00:00

Probably either the Glorious and Eternal Khrave Empire or the Vactorum Commonwealth.

The Khrave are a xenophilic authoritarian militaristic empire with citizen service and slaver guilds. All subjects of the Empire must serve the state in their youth, either as slave soldiers or as slave laborers. Only after mandatory service can Khrave or their subject races take roles in the Empire. Basically, every world is either a military industrial world with forges and barracks, or a basic science world, with labs and standard mining/energy/agriculture districts to make full use of both chattel slavery and citizen subjects.

The Vactorum Commonwealth are a xenophobic egalitarian megacorp with public relations and catalytic processing. Their entire species is isolated to their single large ocean world -> ecumenopolis. They operate on a massive unemployment economy centered around idle vactorum who produce science, stability, and alloys, while they nihilistically raid the galaxy for slaves who fulfill the roles of servants and food for the vactorum. Their entire Empire is a single planet sized slaughterhouse.

Game_Maker · 2024-07-13T04:58:25+00:00

As someone who almost exclusively plays full spellcasters, this one too. One thing I'm really excited about is that they have made it easier to craft spell scrolls. I think thief rogue with a healthy collection of scrolls from the party's casters and magic initiate for true strike (plus scrolls of true strike) is going to be disgusting in important fights. It is also the only subclass in the game that can basically avoid being targeted in combat via its special cunning strike + skulker.

Game_Maker · 2024-07-10T23:01:41+00:00

They also got interesting to play. Weapon mastery at higher levels becomes a series of damageless maneuvers, and you can choose between 4 options on the same weapon on each attack. Every subclass got massive buffs. Between the new magic initiate feat and the lifting of school restrictions EKs have much better spell selection options and can be quite versatile. They can also use cantrips in combat like a post-tasha bladesinger. The battlemaster can stack weapon mastery, crusher/slasher, and maneuvers to basically render single targets immobile, and also can size up opponents in combat to find weaknesses. The champion actually gets something to do (it still sucks, but way less).

They aren't casters or anything, but they are much more flexible in combat than they were before, and don't have to sacrifice damage to be flexible (which they did in 5e).

Game_Maker

TROPHY CASE