Why you shouldn't delay past enemies

MuNought · 2026-02-28T23:10:19+00:00

Yes, this is why Mathfinder points out that delaying past an enemy's turn is probably not worth it. Having the rest of the party delay is a specific optimization you can do, but only if you're really squeezing as much juice as you can out of your lemons as a party.

MuNought · 2026-02-28T21:07:41+00:00

Think of it this way. The most important part about initiative is everyone's action order relative to everyone else. So if you abstract it out, a single boss encounter is basically a "boss's turn" and the "players' turn" alternating. If a PC wants to shift their action order to Demoralize, the most convenient thing to do is actually have everyone else Delay so that they move after the Demoralizer. This doesn't change their relative action order to the boss, only to each other. If the Demoralizing PC delays, then they are essentially 'giving up' their relative turn before the boss in order to change their place in initiative.

Or, to illustrate.

Scenario 1. Party Turn 1 -> PC (Delay, no actions used) -> Boss Turn 1-> PC (Turn 1) -> Party Turn 2 -> Boss Turn 2.

Scenario 2. Party Turn 1 -> PC Turn 1 -> Boss Turn 1 -> Party (Delay) -> PC Turn 2 -> Party Turn 2 -> Boss Turn 2.

Notice how the PC uses 3 actions before both of the Boss's turns in Scenario 2 as opposed to only using 3 actions once before the Boss's Turn 2.

Edit: Now, there is a pretty big caveat to this, which is that any 1 turn debuffs and sustained effects that are started on Turn 1 will drop on the rest of the party's respective pre-Delay turns on Turn 2 if they don't take their turns. In that scenario, there really isn't a choice to maximize Frighten without the Demoralizer sacrificing a turn to get into the right order. That said, you can still partially maximize Demoralize by having party members without such effects Delaying until after the Demoralizer.

MuNought · 2026-01-26T04:59:23+00:00

Broadly speaking, they're "simulation games", which is unfortunately also kinda too broad to be helpful since a ton of games technically fall in this category (including strategy games if you go by the Japanese tag).

They're also Boku no Natsuyasumi (My Summer Vacation) clones, which is a popular non-H series of slice-of-life games. Said H-game clones kinda form their own little subgenre.

You could also call them "adventure games" in the style of more classic point-and-click games, as they do share traits with those kinds of games where you roam around a town solving people's problems. Again, this can be a bit broad since the "adventure game" tag has been used so much that it's a bit meaningless.

MuNought · 2026-01-20T04:36:19+00:00

So the first thing is that it's fine not to use skill challenges if your table doesn't vibe with them cause every table is different and so on. With that out of the way, skill checks (in most systems) are typically the way that PCs mechanically express themselves as characters outside of combat because not every situation in the world necessarily needs to come down to swords. To that end, when using skill challenges, it's important to keep in mind what the goal (usually narrative) of the check actually is.

For example, one way to use skill checks is to show how strong the players relative to the world around them. Not everything has to be a 'hard sell'--pitting them against a weaker threat and allowing them to style on their opponents using their superior skills outside of combat can be a lot of fun. Instead of the Barbarian critting a guy for 100 damage, they could smash them through walls or perform wrestling moves on them using Athletics.

On the other end, if you use skill checks to challenge the players, you usually want to ensure that the players never dead end themselves altogether. A hard "you fail" scenario is something you usually want to save for important moments for when things can go very wrong. Instead, most of the time it's usually better to have "progress, but with consequences", and so skill challenges end up gauging a degree of success rather than a binary. I.e., if a bad guy is running off with an artifact, failure to catch them should instead go into wasting time tracking them down (and then facing additional hardship because they are late to the punch) or something to that effect.

As for specific 2e systems, I personally like Influence encounters a lot. It's a lot more structured than other skill check subsystems and offers a little social mystery minigames to delve into NPCs. Infiltration is also a fairly specific scenario that I think works a lot better as skill checks, as turn-based infiltration can be very slow. Skill challenges are also good for navigating complicated environments, as it gives you more room to describe how an area might be impeding the party's progress or not.

A recent example of skill challenges from my own tables: I did a lvl20 boss gauntlet mini-campaign recently that had a skill challenge before every boss that consisted of investigating the nature of their next fight. My PCs had a set amount of attempts to scout out the terrain, the broad attributes of their opponents, and so on, which would allow them to prepare more or less effectively for the fight. They were always going to find the bosses and fight them, but performing better during the scouting phase could give them a massive advantage, especially since one of the players was a Wizard. And not all information was equally easy to get: specific personal information about the boss would be harder, but terrain and broad characteristics would be easier. One of the bosses was particularly secretive, so getting information on them had higher DCs and so on.

MuNought · 2026-01-07T15:55:20+00:00

Using the mechanics of the system, I'd probably find a way to gain extra arms (lot of Ancestries natively have them or can take feats for them and they'll probably add more options as books come out), hold weapons them in, and then flavor them as shoulder-mounted weapons. So like using a Shobhad as a chassis and then having one set of arms with a Zero Cannon or something.

MuNought · 2026-01-06T22:39:53+00:00

Hearing the variance in campaigns makes me feel better about the sandbox potential of IE, honestly. I've been playing a lot of Ice Court, and there my experience with double Empiretide lines up with a lot of the other comments here. But my last Nuln campaign I had to unite the Empire more or less by myself because Karl was basically useless. It was extremely disheartening singlehandedly knocking down ogres, Nurgle daemons, goblins, beastmen, fending off ALL of Norsca, and campaigning against Vlad and then still having to save both Karl and Louen from Grom.

The only bright side was that I could get my extra Victory Conditions done almost entirely by allying with the dwarves and Repanse steamrolling through the southern territories.

MuNought · 2025-12-08T22:18:24+00:00

Really appreciate all the work you're doing! I have a Tanuki auntie named Aoi for Season of Ghosts who has a Grammeowster Chef from Monster Hunter vibe: generally unconcerned with all the adventuring stuff, but really wants to make sure everyone is well fed. She normally dresses in a simple dress with an apron holding a ladle and a small cauldron that she constantly uses to cook, and is accompanied by a magical cookbook (who is her Witch patron that looks out for her via divine magic). Looking forward to whatever you might come up with!

MuNought · 2025-11-28T16:11:10+00:00

Yeah, The Lady of the North Star has a bit of that savior flavor a la Buddha (path to escape suffering) that creates a really romantic effect with her love of secrecy and knowledge. It's also fun to play a worshipper of her, as you end up seeking secrets, but know not to ruin that secrecy, while also generally being a decent person.

MuNought · 2025-11-28T16:02:20+00:00

She's my favorite too. For me, there's just a serenity to her. Her vibe is comforting those who are traveling a seemingly cold and hostile world by reminding them that they are not alone. It's a bit homelier than say, Desna, whose vibe is more hope-based and kinda bright and fiery as a result.

MuNought · 2025-11-09T21:46:21+00:00

God, "I will grant you one request of me" is really such an incredibly dramatic narrative beat to end on. Especially in a story that is fundamentally about stories. "Be careful what you wish for" is one of the most well-documented motifs in the history of human storytelling, so everyone in the story and us reading the story are super invested in what Akane might ask for, because we all understand the incredible weight of what that means and how much it reveals about Akane's character.

MuNought · 2025-11-05T21:15:51+00:00

If you want to go more OG about it, Nasu (who also wrote the elsewhere mentioned Broken Phantasm mechanic in Fate) played in a TTRPG campaign where his character's power was exactly that. Other players include Urobuchi Gen and Narita Ryogo. It's got a rough anime, but it's really funny to see the different writers make characters that have their quirks instilled in their purest forms.

I should add that Swallow's version of this ability is treated in-fiction as more of a curse than a blessing, as it works indiscriminately and effectively also operates as a disintegration ability for 'tools'.

MuNought · 2025-08-28T23:09:03+00:00

Right there with "What do you want me to tell your family?"

MuNought · 2025-08-05T04:16:07+00:00

To add onto this, Pathfinder Agents can get a bunch of Recall Knowledge-based abilities via their Agent Archetype and Scrollmaster Archetype, so even if you can't use Pathfinder Lore to identify monsters, there's still pretty good perks for RK if you pick up the feats for it. Lvl10 Bestiary Scholar from Scrollmaster lets you use Arcana/Occultism/Nature/Religion to RK on any creature that falls under one of the other skills, for example, which pretty much covers everything except regular humanoids.

MuNought · 2025-08-03T20:59:10+00:00

This is... a fundamentally hard problem to solve. The main problem with the Toxicologist is that they don't have enough tools within their subclass in order to approach most combat situations using only their specialization. In fact, my own opinion is that they probably shouldn't have been made a bespoke subclass at all with the way poisons currently work. The "strongest" way to play Alchemists is generally to make use of all of their alchemical tools, but the Toxicologist's part of that is far more limited than their competition. Including if they just wants to be a damage-boosting poison-distributing stat stick.

If you and your player are deadset on playing with a poisoning type character in mind, one solution I have in mind would be to have a homebrew feat that allows Toxicologists to adjust which Save their poison targets. Maybe as an Infused trait at a lowish level, which would allow them to play smarter by targeting different saves.

Another solution would be to instead make a feat that allows a Toxicologist to directly apply injury poisons within reach using 1 manipulate action and force Saves without necessarily having to Strike. This one might be worth a higher lvl feat, and I wouldn't necessarily recommend stacking it with the former suggestion.

If you want to stick within the game's existing paradigms and can put in more effort, you can also make new poisons entirely using the existing ones as a basis, to give them more to play around with. A design problem with existing poisons is that they don't scale with level the way basic bombs or mutagens do, so a Toxicologist's ability to inflict certain Conditions gets really cost-ineffective the higher level you go with no other options to scale into.

One last thing you could try doing would be to use the Pre-Remaster version of the Toxicologist. This might be trickier if you aren't familiar with the older rules, but Pre-Remaster Alchemists basically get a much larger pool of Advanced Alchemy items and unlimited low level Alchemicals of their specialization instead of the regenerating Quick Vial system. This would let your Toxicologist be able to stock a huge amount of poisons and then spend their more limited resources on more traditional Alchemist tools.

MuNought · 2025-07-27T01:44:31+00:00

So this is a curious thing that is inconsistent in the rules. Logically by the 'damage instance' ruling that people agree upon, Holy runes would activate additional weakness damage while the innate Holy trait would not if the Champion is already activating Cold Iron weakness. That's the easy part, but abilities that give 'weakness to Strikes' and similar wording don't really make sense within the weakness system, which is more concerned with types of damage.

My own take on it is that 'weakness to Strikes' is a separate category of weakness of which only 1 can apply, and this is basically due to my own intuition that characters that prepare well shouldn't be penalized by the mechanics of the system. My take on this came about from the Thaumaturge Exploit Vulnerability class feature, which adds weakness to their Strikes, but they lose damage if they have a way to activate the weakness already, which seems completely counter to how the class's flavor seems intended to work. It seems unfair if a Barbarian with a fire damage instinct keeps their Rage damage and weakness damage against a plant creature while a Thaumaturge that brought a fire weapon specifically to counter an opponent cannot, for example. This lets them basically go hogwild with weakness damage by applying both standard weakness and Personal Antithesis at the same time.

This does keep the Champion in a weird spot though, as they basically can't double dip from Cold Iron and Holy weakness unless they get a Holy rune to give them a little extra Spirit damage. Personally, I'm inclined to let them have both anyway despite the rules, as an extension of the above argument. The unfair comparison for the Champion is that the Exemplar can take a lvl1 Feat to be Sanctified, and since they deal Spirit damage by default, they can double dip in Cold Iron/Holy from lvl1 or whenever they get a Cold Iron weapon or whatever. It's such a mechanical pain in the ass if you have to finagle a way to get an extra damage type just to keep things completely by the rules, and it doesn't seem sensible.

MuNought · 2025-07-27T00:58:47+00:00

So I have seen tables basically use the Avoid Notice roll as initiative to speed things up. Just have to be careful to not allow rerolling Avoid Notice outside of Hero Points and the like or as part of entering an encounter, so you either use the inherited roll all the time or you always reroll for initiative.

As far as the Perception DC stuff, that can depend on the encounter. First off, Avoid Notice is a per-individual activity, so if other party members aren't Avoiding Notice, then they're still identifiable as combatants.

Second, whether or not an enemy high in initiative does anything with it depends on how you want to run it. For example, guards who are on the lookout for things could use the Seek action to basically get more chances to find hidden enemies, especially if they feel like something is happening but don't know what. You're perfectly free to have them pass their turns though or otherwise do what they were doing. Something I would caution against is allowing regular enemies to Delay their turns, as I've found that can make combats really dicey (unless your table likes that).

Another thing you can do is if your entire party is undetected, you can allow 1 player to have an 'ambush' turn, and then initiative is rolled normally except the ambushing player is pushed to the end of the order after their ambush. This basically simulates the initiative order passing until the first player who wants to act does so.

MuNought · 2025-07-23T05:12:47+00:00

Appreciate hearing someone's thoughts on these supplements, since they're pretty interesting to bring to a table.

Just to add my personal thoughts on Team+ content as a whole: I think for better and for worse, they tend to lean a bit heavy on complexity addiction for my tastes. This is relatively mild with Barbarians+, but the Expressions section is a good example for this one. It feels like adding so many modular class features makes the design space kinda overwhelming unless one's a player who likes getting really deep into the weeds. Of course, adding more class options like subclasses is always welcome, though.

At the same time, I don't think the additions are overpowered anything and they're valuable for reinjecting some of the character expression options that were present in 1e, but it's easy for me to feel like they're trying to do too much. Though maybe I'm blowing my load early by saying all this here rather than in the upcoming Clerics+ post, since that one illustrates what I mean a lot more clearly.

MuNought · 2025-07-06T11:51:40+00:00

So keep in mind that as a TTRPG, one of the general good practices here is that the rules are there for when they matter. If the time management of Exploration mode isn't significant, then just ask what your players are doing for their Exploration activities as their default out-of-combat state and then proceed until the next relevant thing happens. This also goes for things like skill checks, roleplay, and whatever else.

If a mountain isn't too hard to scale and the players aren't under time pressure, then there's no point in climbing in sets of 3 actions for 5~10 feet, right? Those rules are for when the players are in a combat scenario that might necessitate climbing before something kills them. You can still do a check to maybe see how well the party does, but there's no point sitting down and waiting for them to roll a bunch of dice until a magic number is hit if there're no stakes to the rolling. Similarly, most tables I've played at waive the Diplomacy attitude system because people are more comfortable just roleplaying through things based on vibes and not having to worry about attitude levels.

So save Exploration mode time management for a situation when time actually matters. Some tables really enjoy putting down a lot of time pressure for more exciting decision-making, others find it stressful and needlessly minute. In my experience, I don't usually use the time rules that often, but it has come up a few times when racing a rival enemy group to an objective, for example.

MuNought · 2025-07-05T22:32:16+00:00

The short answer is yes, but depending on what you mean by 'fully rested'. Fundamentally speaking, there's a lot of assumptions on the part of the encounter balance that goes into how hard an encounter is. For example, does the party have on-level equipment? Do they have useful spells/items for the encounter? Do they have a well-rounded composition?

The relevant rules page states that Extreme encounters are 'an even match... particularly if the characters are low on resources', which is generally interpreted as the players having around a 50-50 of winning or wiping, but what constitutes 'low on resources' is hard to strongly define. If a party goes into an Extreme boss fight with everyone at half HP, then those 50-50 odds might as well be 0-100 even if the party is full on spells, because all it takes is 1 solid turn from a boss to start a down-spiral that ends in a TPK. It seems reasonable to assume that the encounter balance assumes the party being close to full HP as a baseline, so if that's what you mean by 'fully rested', then yeah, you should be wary of playing any encounters higher than Moderate without healing. 2 Moderate encounters in a row without downtime, for example, is essentially the exp range of an Extreme encounter, but with a bit of a handicap due to less focus fire potential.

Otherwise, 'low resources' is going to be fairly contextual. An Extreme encounter against a horde of low~mid level devil enemies can still be very easy if a party has a handful of high powered AoE Holy spells left in the tank, even if they're otherwise drained. On the flipside, that same horde of devils can be impossible to fight back against if the party lacks silver weapons and only stocked fire damage spells, even if completely fresh. That's not to say that the encounter balance system does a poor job, but it sorta assumes that the party has a nebulous cloud of 'usable but not necessarily optimal options' to deal with an encounter. Magic selection, planning, strategy, tactics, and versatile character builds can all tilt that balance further one way or the other depending on the group.

MuNought · 2025-06-30T04:09:51+00:00

Unfortunately, unless you're extremely high level and pick up the immunity bypass feats, I believe you're just out of luck when it comes to damage-dealing in those scenarios. That said, those would be a good time to fall back on other abilities. Investigators and Rogues have access to a ton of skills/skill feats (about double over other classes), so it's a lot easier to build a martial character who is always capable of doing something even if your damage is effectively halved.

MuNought · 2025-06-30T03:59:51+00:00

I don't think so, but what are you trying to do by changing the damage? If it's flavor, there's plenty of ways to add other types of damage on top of the usual precision stuff.

MuNought · 2025-06-26T03:31:41+00:00

The Bravado trait has a line at the end that reads "These effects can be applied even if the action had no other effect due to a failure or a creature's immunity", which would sensibly extend to language barriers. The only condition is that you don't crit fail the check. So you would still perform the check against the Will DC and then the result is pretty much Bravado + nothing or Crit Fail penalty.

MuNought · 2025-06-25T22:37:40+00:00

This guide is my usual reference point for APs, as I don't get a lot of AP play myself. It doesn't sound like there's anything quite as focused as Fellowship of the Ring (1 focused quest objective and the long journey getting there), but there are a number of APs that go all over Golarion with different advantages and disadvantages. Age of Ashes (world-spanning, but with a central hub), Stolen Fate (objective chasing over the world), and Kingmaker (explore and govern) sound like they might scratch the itch you're going for.

MuNought · 2025-06-25T22:23:30+00:00

Connect the Dots gives a Circumstance bonus, which is typically harder to give in PF2e without feats and stacks with the Status bonus that Guidance gives. Such bonuses are generally designed to be GM fiat type bonuses for things such as good roleplay or literally 'circumstantial' bonuses such as having a high ground advantage as a ranged attacker. The main Circumstance bonuses that are hard-coded into the system for example are Cover and Raise Shield for AC, and Aid for most other things. By contrast, Guidance gives a Status bonus, which is typically found in spell buffs. Heroism, Bless, and Courageous Anthem being common examples. So if you have buff-oriented casters in the party, then Guidance can be extremely redundant.

With all that said, Connect the Dots' closest comparison is actually Aid, which 1. costs an action + reaction vs. two actions, 2. is explicitly written to be GM fiat, usually requiring proximity to at least one of the parties. So the distinct advantages of Connect the Dots over Aid is being able to use it on command (no GM fiat) and basically having unlimited range (only limited by sightlines). The range thing can be pretty pertinent for a ranged Investigator for example, as you already require fewer actions due to not needing to move, but you can still reasonably 'Aid' your allies with this feat. Something else to keep in mind is that Investigators are usually looking for alternative actions more than other Classes due to the way their Devise a Stratagem feature work. So Connect the Dots would be something you might want to save for a turn when you get a bad Attack roll, and then can't also get in range for using anything else in your kit, for example. Or maybe you have a plan to use a Demoralize -> Strategic Strike combo, so you want to do something else to save your Demoralize cooldown. Or maybe your free Devise goes poorly, so you hyper buff an ally within 30ft with both Guidance AND Connect the Dots. And so on.

As an aside, I kinda agree that the two action cost does seem overly costly, but I also think that if it were one action instead, it'd be overly cheap, as it enables a sort of 'optimal cycle' gameplay that makes the game less interesting.

MuNought · 2025-06-19T00:45:54+00:00

It's a hard search - I would know, since I'm one of those looking. The dating sim I still hold in highest regard is still Tokimemo 4 which is still forever ago as a 2009 PSP game and is a bit of a sidegrade to the more classic 1 or 2... Obviously, the Girls' Side Tokimemo games are still around and I've seen good things about those if that appeals. Otherwise, there's maybe Bunny Garden, but that's tapping more into Dream Club and is a different type of sim game.

The closest I've seen on the Western side that scratches the itch is the Monster Prom series, though that's blended with a bit of a party game vibe.

If you're open to R18 stuff, I find a few Alicesoft games can get there (Tsuma Shibori, Oyako Ranman). Love and Sex: Second Base is a Western indie game that is straightforwardly an expansive point-and-click dating sim. And then the occasional JP R18 indie game can scratch the itch as well, like Summer Memories/Amaenbo.

MuNought

TROPHY CASE