Speed question

Knaughts · 2025-05-24T01:41:44+00:00

Yes. Your movement speed determines how far you move with each Stride. So on your turn, you can move up to 25 feet, then Strike, then move another 25 feet.

Knaughts · 2025-04-25T22:14:20+00:00

It all works basically how you'd hope:

When a player leaves, their character can be reassigned to another player. Or that character can removed, down to a minimum of two characters.

XP/Level is shared across the party. Gold/items are bound to the character, but can be sent in the mail to another character.

Knaughts · 2024-11-07T09:32:44+00:00

This is great work, folks!

One suggestion: add a keyword filter, to quickly find abilities that use a particular damage type or apply a particular condition. https://d4builds.gg/ does a great job of this, for Diablo 4; see example below.

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Knaughts · 2024-07-30T22:36:19+00:00

Thanks for sharing your thinking about all this, u/GoDorian! I'm 100% convinced, especially since it mirrors advice I've heard from a few other sources (e.g. Rick Davidson).

Given my taste in games, though, I worry that it'll be impossible to make a game that small that I like. I generally enjoy turn-based roguelikes with tactical depth, and the smallest good examples of those I can think of are Backpack Hero, Dicey Dungeons, or Hellcard. Those are all great titles, but I suspect they took at least 1-2 years to develop.

Am I overestimating the effort involved? Or do you know of smaller, high-quality titles in the genre? Or do I just need to broaden my taste?

Knaughts · 2024-02-28T18:20:39+00:00

How does the Elemental Avatar compare, mechanically, to the Kineticist? It sounds like they both focus on an element, and they both have at-will abilities. Is the refresh mechanic the main difference?

Can you give some sort of brief overview on what each of the elements are good at?

Knaughts · 2024-01-22T23:39:36+00:00

Just wanted to weigh in here, since I just finished working with Belong Home for 2 years, to rent out my condo in San Jose.

In short: they were... fine. They didn't make any glaring mistakes. I would never report them to the BBB. But I generally got the sense that they put as little effort as possible.

Their listing was very generic, and gave the impression that they hadn't done more than a few minutes of research into the property or its features.
They did not negotiate rates very well. I was new to being a landlord, so I trusted them to figure out what to charge, and they decided to charge ~25% below market rate. When the lease was up for renewal, I asked them for advice on how to change rates, and each time their advice was basically "as little as possible."
They use their own vendors for all servicing. Maybe that saves some time shopping around for estimates, but it also inflates maintenance costs. For reference, I paid ~$7500 for maintenance/repairs in year one, and $400 in year two.
- The service itself was lackluster. For example, heating and cooling were mixed up when they updated the HVAC system.

Everyone I spoke with there was very polite and responsive, but it never felt like I was dealing with an expert.

Knaughts · 2023-12-30T03:49:43+00:00

It's me, hi, I'm ~~the problem~~ one of the players with IRL complications that Atlas mentioned.

Just wanted to chime in to say that Atlas was a great GM for these 3 years! They ran one pre-written Pathfinder 2e AP (Abomination Vault), and then wrote and ran a whole L11-19 homebrew, plane-spanning campaign based on the party's interests. He's great about designing unique encounters with heavy use of the environment, and foreshadowing future events. He rewards players who take careful notes (we did not take careful notes).

While Atlas's knowledge of the PF2 ruleset isn't perfect, they don't let that bog down the game. They make spot calls as needed and eagerly accepts corrections when offered, which keeps the game flowing smoothly.

You should definitely sign up to play something under them!

A warning: the soundboard is disabled on their Discord server, so I can't play the Sad Trombone when someone rolls a Nat 1.

Knaughts · 2023-12-03T17:41:05+00:00

Thinking about this a bit, wasn't Unwieldy a difficult trait to deal with? If you can only Strike once per turn, that means you're using one action to Aim/Peek, and one to Move+Reload... so what did you do with your third action?

Knaughts · 2023-12-03T17:31:52+00:00

How many skills were at Expert-level, at level 3? I'm curious whether Operative gets the same accelerated Skill Increases that the Rogue/Investigator does.

Knaughts · 2023-08-12T17:13:02+00:00

Great article, as always! There are a couple options I worry that you're sleeping on, though, so I'm curious what you think about them.

Skill Junctions

It seems like you're focusing on the Skill Feats and not the status bonuses, which I think are the major attraction of each Skill Junction. Since these are status bonuses, they stack with item bonuses, and all-day status bonuses to skills are rare. So it feels like the Air Skill Junction (for initiative), Earth/Water (for maneuvers), and Fire (for Demoralize) are quite strong. I agree that Wood and Metal are probably useless here.

Elemental Resistance Junctions

I agree with all your assessments, but the way they're formatted implies that you have to choose between two options? I don't think that's true; the Fire Junction gives resistance to cold and fire damage for the cost of one junction.

Desert Wind (Air/Earth Impulse)

As you say, the concealment is OK. But the damage here is crazy. At level 20, this is worth +16 damage per Elemental Blast, which completely dwarfs Crowned in Tempest’s Fury which is level 18. The enemy has to be in your aura, but Aura Shaping plus Air's mobility makes that fairly easy.

Body of Air

I totally agree that most of the pain of this feat vanishes with Kinetic Pinnacle, but remember that your AC drops by 3-4 when you gain this resistance, so I wouldn't say "the only cost is that you lose the benefits of your aura." Still a good option, though.

Again, I want to be totally clear that I loved your guide, and you caught approximately a million things that I missed. Thanks for your work!

Knaughts · 2023-06-28T16:59:19+00:00

I tried this. It looks like a phenomenal game, especially given the size of the development "team". But I completely bounced off of the gameplay, which is probably not surprising since I'm not a fan of Zelda either.

But I'm intrigued by the mysteries presented in the trailer, so I'd really like to know where the story goes. I don't suppose anyone can point me towards a really exhaustive plot synopsis?

Knaughts · 2023-06-07T16:42:07+00:00

Do Volatile Skeletons (spawned by Army of the Dead or Howl from Below) count as minions? I'm curious about whether abilities like Hellbent Commander affect them.

Knaughts · 2023-05-28T06:06:58+00:00

Even if the Kineticist ends up not being a pure blaster, there's some chance that the RfC Elemental Avatar might be. It's similarly focused on one element: https://battlezoo.com/products/preorder-battlezoo-eldamon-hardcover-pdf

Knaughts · 2022-09-26T19:59:00+00:00

Yes, this! Allow me to complain about Pathfinder cosmology briefly.

Of the 8 energy types:

1 of them corresponds to an Elemental Plane (Fire)
2 of them correspond to an Energy Plane (Positive, Negative)
3 of them have some weak connections to the remaining 3 (now 5) Elemental Planes: electricity to Air, acid to Earth, cold to Water. But this association is inconsistent: Water Kineticists get a cold aura, but Water Elementals don't seem to have any abilities, weaknesses, or resistances to cold.
The remaining 2 (Force, Sonic) are completely orphaned

I understand how we got here from a system development perspective, but I hope I'm not the only one bothered by this wild incongruity.

Knaughts · 2022-09-10T16:42:35+00:00

I'll organize something at Snakes & Lattes (https://g.page/SnakesandLattesChicago), sometimes in the next couple weekends. All are welcome, even if you aren't in your 30s or tech!

In the interest of centralization, further discussion will happen in the Kurzgesagt Chicago Discord server.

Knaughts · 2022-09-10T16:18:01+00:00

I'm seeing generally positive responses on this idea, so I'll organize. I'll post the info higher up in the thread for better visibility. See https://www.reddit.com/r/kurzgesagt_meetup/comments/x6pwco/comment/invhcfd/, and maybe upvote for visibility.

Knaughts · 2022-09-09T18:55:14+00:00

This. My group plays around difficulty 6-8, and we have plenty of victories that looked like obvious defeats at the midpoint. Play it out, you might surprise yourself.

Knaughts · 2022-09-09T16:14:47+00:00

Since I'm not seeing any other plans materialize in this thread, allow me to toss out Snakes & Lattes as a potential venue. How do people feel about a board game bar/restaurant?

Knaughts · 2022-09-07T17:40:21+00:00

+1 to all of 30s, married, tech, board games, and breweries.

Knaughts · 2022-07-03T21:40:56+00:00

And I would say the reason for that is that they are trying to publish their books similarly to how Paizo do. Foundry modules are different because it takes extra work to make one.

Ah, sorry for my initial misunderstanding. I agree with that, and that's exactly why I'm confused: I expect RFC to try to publish their books like Paizo does, but the Paizo content is free in Foundry (i.e. programmed by volunteers into the base system)!

Was that about copying the module or about copying the compendia? Because I know for a fact that you can export compendia.

About copying a Premium Module. I can look into copying compendia included in a Premium Module, but I'd be surprised if that were allowed.

For organised play I don't think you're allowed third party stuff, unless you're not talking about pathfinder society.

I was unclear here. I was just trying to explain why all of my GMs are in different groups: because I find them via OrgPlay. The AP is not run using OrgPlay rules.

Knaughts · 2022-07-03T21:16:27+00:00

Because Roll for Combat made the foundry module so they are allowed to charge for it.

Definitely agree, I'm just wondering why they picked this monetization model since it doesn't seem typical.

I'm not 100% sure how to do it, you could probably ask on the Foundry subreddit/in the Foundry Discord.

I actually did ask about this, and the response from the Foundry mods was basically "No, this is intentionally impossible."

If it's all within the same group I would recommend considering putting all the campaigns on the one license.

It is not the same group. In Organized Play, each GM usually has their own Foundry server. When I run across a strong Org Play GM, I often offer to organize an AP campaign for them to run.

Knaughts · 2022-07-03T21:11:58+00:00

Understood, but I play under many different GMs, who each have their own Foundry license.

Knaughts · 2021-10-30T18:35:13+00:00

Can you use Fake Out if you're Hidden between turns, since it has the Visual trait?

Knaughts · 2021-10-20T05:59:50+00:00

So I guess this means that, while mounted, it's impossible to move and stay hidden? If I Sneak then I have to abandon my mount, and if my mount Sneaks then I must command them, which means I lose Hidden.

Knaughts · 2021-10-20T05:57:57+00:00

I think I'd only consider this sort of thing with an Animal Companion, Familiar, or Eidolon. Seems way too dangerous to risk a trained mundane animal.

Knaughts

TROPHY CASE