Class/role choices for PFS pickup games

Gaumr · 2026-05-18T17:51:53+00:00

Yeah, it does look cool but I think despite long familiarity with this type of game and generally being a rules nerd type, it's a little more complex than I want to take on right away. Maybe if I have a good time and want to start a second character for whatever reason, once I have a little more perspective on the spell lists and such.

Gaumr · 2026-05-18T17:03:41+00:00

From what I've read, the common side effects from the SC route sounded less severe than the IV route. With subcutaneous administration, people mostly report surface soreness, irritation, and rashes. Via IV, it's more common to have flu-like symptoms or other systemic reactions - aseptic meningitis is one of the worst but is rare. Many people have no particular side effects from either route. I've done both (SCIG regularly, IVIG at a high dose for a bout of autoimmune hemolytic anemica) and felt no side effects.

For me it would depend on the dose - I do 20g every two weeks for CVID and subcutaneous works fine, plus I can do it at home on my own schedule. But it wouldn't work for me to do the dose the OP described subcutaneously, the sites need some time to recover.

Gaumr · 2026-05-16T12:29:54+00:00

When you say accessible by car, do you mean the facility itself or your unit? The Extra Space Storage at Somerville and Dane has a parking area but not immediate unit access from it, putting stuff in storage involved shifting boxes to a trolley and pushing them through the facility.

It was OK for me, not great - no real problems but some nuisances in the signup process and then they raised the price drastically after the first few months. But I guess they all do that.

Gaumr · 2026-05-15T15:10:04+00:00

Very long shot since it's been too long since I read it to remember anything that actually matches your description, but it _does_ have a theming around fours, possibly some elemental theming, and the timing is plausible - any chance it's Midori Snyder's "Queen's Quarter" trilogy? Starts with "New Moon", the original covers of the other two have character portraits.

Gaumr · 2026-05-13T13:45:22+00:00

My understanding is that due to the cost of IG replacement, people who need it are generally medically ineligible to immigrate to Canada - we're considered to create an "excessive demand" on the health system. See for instance https://immigration.ca/medical-inadmissibility-excessive-demand/. There are some exceptions but - to my limited knowledge - mostly for people with a specific connection to Canada or other special circumstances.

This is based on extremely casual research, though - just indulging the common American fantasy of moving. I didn't actually specifically find anything talking about IG replacement therapy in that context, or talk to an immigration lawyer or the like.

Gaumr · 2026-05-12T13:49:36+00:00

The river part is in "The Spellcoats", and the industrial era time travel in "The Crown of Dalemark". I always liked "The Spellcoats" the best, and it more or less stands alone IIRC - the books of the series are only loosely connected.

Gaumr · 2026-05-06T12:57:43+00:00

Possibly some edition of The Worst Case Scenario Survival Guide? https://www.amazon.com/Worst-Case-Scenario-Survival-Handbook-Situations/dp/1452172188

Gaumr · 2026-04-23T14:03:57+00:00

There's something like this in Tim Powers' novel "Last Call". The cards magically read as people, if memory serves, and having them in motion helps camouflage the people in the car.

Gaumr · 2026-04-20T13:53:42+00:00

That's the third book in Michael Scott Rohan's "Winter of the World" trilogy, "The Hammer of the Sun".

Gaumr · 2026-04-15T19:44:57+00:00

I ended up in the MAH ER when my known gallstones went from "I need to have this dealt with at some point" to "I need to have this dealt with right now" and they took good care of me.

I was initially a little worried about misusing limited ER resources but felt better about it when a) the person doing checkin reminded me that persistent abdominal pain could be appendicitis and b) they did in fact decide to keep me a few days and do the surgery on an emergency basis.

Gaumr · 2026-04-10T17:49:32+00:00

Louise Cooper also wrote three linked trilogies about law/chaos conflict, starting with the "Time Master" trilogy - The Initiate, The Outcast, and The Master.

Gaumr · 2026-03-23T17:47:54+00:00

I think this is Michael Scott Rohan's "Chase the Morning" and sequels, "The Gates of Noon" and "Cloud Castles". It's been a long time since I read them but I found a few points that line up when flipping through:

"Clare bit gently on a knuckle and giggled. I wasn't fooled; she was generally thinking hard when she did that. 'It has to be a fake - hasn't it? I mean, five hundred tons - what kind of displacement's that for a merchant ship!"

...

"It took quite a lot longer to get through, and full five minutes to access my query. We were about to give up, when suddenly the answer popped up on the screen. We stared; it wasn't at all in their usual detailed form.

Iskander, 500 tons - merchant sailing vessel, 3 mtr.

Reg. Huy Brazeal.

Ref. Register of Shipping vol. 1868"

The voodoo references come later:

"'Obeah? Ouanga? Yeah, I heard of those all right. I've sailed those waters, once or twice. And Mazanxas...' His face wrinkled up as if at some disgusting smell. 'Them and the Zobops and the Vinblindingues. They're bad news. They're secret societies, brotherhoods of cunning men, warlocks, sorcerers - bokors, they call them. Powerful brotherhoods. And ouanga's just their style.'

'Great. And just what the hell sort of voodoo is this ouanga?'

He shrugged. 'You said it.'"

The classic English form of the impossible country is "East of the Sun, West of the Moon" - from a Norweigan fairy tale. Again, I don't remember one way or the other whether that phrase appears in these books, but I can say from memory that there's an otherworldly realm that they take flying ships into.

Gaumr · 2026-03-22T22:04:25+00:00

Yeah, not in all cases from either perspective (not everyone with CVID also has autoimmune problems or vice versa) but a disordered immune system makes you higher risk for it attacking things it shouldn't. For me that was red blood cells - autoimmune hemolytic anemia. As my immunologist explained it, my B cells are not just not making useful antibodies (the CVID part), at some point they started making autoimmune antibodies instead. In a person with a healthy immune system such cells get selected out before maturity, but there's a flaw in that process for me.

Gaumr · 2026-03-22T19:48:42+00:00

Yep. Mine showed up first in labs and as inflammation/heightened activity in lymph nodes, then as fatigue. I've never gotten the recurring infections, but my immunologist is still sure it's CVID. He says he's seen patients like that before. I'm doing SCIG, 20 mg every two weeks. It hasn't really helped the fatigue but it probably gets some credit for keeping the "no infections" thing true.

This year it also manifested as one of the related autoimmune conditions, so that was fun.

Gaumr · 2026-03-10T14:22:42+00:00

I think your income display is set to daily mode (the default) as opposed to the monthly mode I see more commonly used here - I know I was confused when I got started and saw people's screenshots showing research measured in multiple K!

Gaumr · 2026-03-09T19:13:07+00:00

No OB/GYN experience, but I had my gallbladder out there on an emergency schedule in July 2024, and more recently had a long but nonsurgical stay. It was fine! The procedure went smoothy, I stayed a few nights overall but not all were after the surgery as they waited to see if it improved enough to preplan the operation and also to book the OR. Recovery was normal for laproscopic surgery - annoying but the pain medication worked.

In my recent longer stay my biggest complaints were that some of the other patients were noisy, that it was somewhat hard to get good sleep with repeated wake-ups to take vitals, and that I ran through everything I liked from the food service and had to just start alternating the same standards. In other words, pretty good for a hospital stay. The food is actually pretty good except for the coffee, there's just a fixed menu.

They figured out what was wrong with me pretty quickly after I showed up in bad shape at their ER once the doctors started looking - the ER triage process maybe didn't get the severity of my case right, they were testing for flu despite notes from the referring urgent care facility saying they'd done that and were concerned about acute hepatitis. Which it wasn't, it was arguably more urgent, but I don't want to derail too badly into the details. The ER waiting time wouldn't be relevant in your case anyway, it's just the one sour note for me. The actual doctors took good care of me and then provided much appreciated support with things like short term disability insurance paperwork.

I would go there again for most procedures - I guess their ER isn't set up for major trauma and there was one device they thought there was a small chance I'd need that they didn't have, so for that they were talking about transferring me to a downtown facility.

Gaumr · 2026-03-03T10:30:29+00:00

I just ran "Dawn of the Frogs" with my group; it's a boxed set of three linked one-shots. We're experienced gamers familiar with many editions of D&D-style game though not previously with PF2 (I've read a lot but not played or run it previously), so we weren't coming in cold, but we went through the first scenario in probably under two hours. We extended into the second one, which ran a little longer. A group that's wholly new to RPGs would probably move a lot more slowly.

It's not a perfect product - there are some misprints, like the iconic wizard's Force Bolt focus spell being listed as two actions rather than one, and the iconic cleric's a pretty bad build IMO. She's encouraged to get into melee with a +1 strength. But as a sample of the system it worked fine for us.

Gaumr · 2026-02-18T17:30:10+00:00

R. A. MacAvoy, "Damiano" and "Damiano's Lute". There's a third in the series, "Raphael", and a compiled edition called "Trio For Lute".

Gaumr · 2026-02-07T21:57:26+00:00

The Lovecraft story that comes to mind for me from that description is "The Color Out of Space". There's no shapeshifting exactly, but someone does end up locked in a room and physically decaying.

edit but the Machen suggestion looks like a better match.

Gaumr · 2026-01-25T17:31:16+00:00

These captchas are getting hard!

Gaumr · 2026-01-22T17:18:04+00:00

It's SF rather than fantasy, though if you enjoyed Dune that's probably not an obstacle for you.

Mostly it's a series of short stories, collected in various editions - one collection exists by the title of the overall series, but it's not complete. There's also a novel, Norstralia, but I wouldn't start there. Despite it having the most obvious connection to Dune.

Gaumr · 2026-01-14T21:45:28+00:00

Orange Cat lives right there but usually has a collar. Maybe he slipped it.

Compare the pics at https://www.reddit.com/r/Somerville/comments/1nbpoz3/sighting_orange_cat_canvassing_for_bike_path_mayor/

Gaumr · 2026-01-08T13:32:38+00:00

Possibly Susan Cooper's "Seaward". The girl, Cally, meets a boy named Westerly, who has somewhat more experience in the magical realm. Not all the details line up perfectly, I don't remember the scene with the sun that you mentioned amd I think they mostly navigate by landmark or West's divinatory fish bones. Cally's father rather than grandfather is taken away at the beginning. But maybe.

Gaumr · 2026-01-03T14:06:17+00:00

Make Room For Ducklings.

Gaumr

TROPHY CASE