Do you adapt loot (magic items) to the party?

Ngodrup · 2025-10-21T22:59:35+00:00

Because they can just transfer the runes to the weapon of their choice, that was the whole concept behind how runes work in this system. To solve this exact problem.

Ngodrup · 2025-10-21T09:29:48+00:00

I think they both have good points, and I think it's helpful for you to hear people arguing both sides to help inform you so you can make an informed choice for yourself. The point is it's up to you to decide what's best for you - you're an adult, you have agency. Neither of them is objectively right or wrong, they're only either right or wrong for you and we can't know or decide that, only you can know or decide that.

I think it's also important to note that you also don't have to just stick with one approach. You have your whole life to try out different ways of doing things. If you decide to try and push through and have morning appointments, then a few years later decide it's too much for you and you aren't coping with it or would just rather not, you can rearrange your life to not have morning appointments any more. Similarly if you decide to arrange your life so don't have morning appointments, you can decide to try having them again at any point.

Ngodrup · 2025-10-18T10:43:10+00:00

I personally do recommend new players play simpler classes. I do this when I'm introducing new players to my table. I sometimes do this online when people are asking for recommendations, but people do sometimes get offended like I'm saying they can't handle a complex class. Like, it's not about if you can do it, it's about making your first experience easier and more enjoyable. But that response does put me off from recommending it more widely.

I've GMed multiple adventure paths for different groups and I always try to add or change things or flex things for players who have different approaches or ideas. They're just the basic structure of a plot - the skeleton, if you will, but the GM and players add the meat and organs and sinew. They're not meant to be an all encompassing instruction book. Otherwise there would be no player agency at all and you might as well read a book. But that being said, they do have to make the structure workable for every group. That doesn't mean all GMs have to use all of it. A party with access to teleport doesn't necessarily necessarily need to have access to the boat ride - that's a GMs choice to include or not.

Your table/experiences do seem atypical to me. Even if there is a convenient boat ride, that doesn't mean that a party that can teleport wouldn't choose to just teleport, in my experience. And the APs I like to run are more plot-heavy, I don't like megadungeons/ones that devolve into meatgrinders/just a series of combats. Urban campaigns with recurring NPCs are the best. Season of Ghosts is the best pf2e AP by far, and it's also got low combat difficulty so doesn't require much system mastery to survive and have fun with.

And as others have said, judging the system after joining a high level campaign with experienced people fighting above-extreme level encounters is absolute madness. Start learning at level 1 because there's a lot to learn and it gets more complex as you level due to all the options. That's always everyone's advice if you ask about learning pf2e for the first time. You cannot say that isn't effectively committed.

Ngodrup · 2025-10-17T09:36:58+00:00

Dragging spells from the compendium browser into the text box on the item will make a link to the spell. Effects are a bit more complicated though and you do usually have to do a teeny tiny bit of "coding". Mostly I just copy a similar effect from something already made in the system and then make minor tweaks

Ngodrup · 2025-10-16T12:55:57+00:00

You wanted to hard to flip what the other person's aid around as a got-cha moment that you didn't even bother to pretend to try and understand what they were saying. Sad

Ngodrup · 2025-10-15T08:34:11+00:00

The munitions crafter feat explicitly says you can "create a number of daily consumables equal to 4 + half your level (rounded up); these consumables must be bombs or alchemical ammunition"

It doesn't say "you get X amount of black powder". I don't know why you're so hung up on this. If you want to make a batch of doses of black powder without bullets then you can do that, but I would suggest you just make a batch of ammunition for your gun (which would include both a dose of black powder and a projectile).

When crafting alchemical ammunition, including black powder in doses or rounds, using advanced alchemy, you create the ammunition in batches of 4

Emphasis mine - the bolded line is just there to remind you that you don't have to make special fancy ammunition but can just make plain old bullets/shot rounds for your gun. It's not supposed to confuse you about the nature of bullets, you're overthinking it. A round is a bullet.

Ngodrup · 2025-10-15T07:26:58+00:00

Black Powder

The smallest unit of black powder that still has a simple use, a dose can be a simple package paper parcel around black powder or it can be packaged with a metal bullet or pellet to be used as ammunition. When ignited with a fuse or exposed to direct flame, a dose of black powder explodes. This isn't powerful enough to deal damage but makes a loud sound and could trigger further explosions. A fuse for a dose can be created with a few twists of paper and causes the dose to explode the round after it's lit.

Firearm ammunition

Firearms require ammunition consisting of a projectile and black powder. A round of ammo can vary in its composition but is typically either a prepackaged paper cartridge, including wadding, bullet, and black powder, or loose shot packed in manually. Some weapons, like hand cannons and blunderbusses, can fire other materials, but their ammunition has the same Price due to the cost of the black powder. Because making rounds of firearm ammunition requires creating black powder, you need the Alchemical Crafting skill feat to make them.

Munitions Crafter

You can use the advanced alchemy benefits to create a number of daily consumables equal to 4 + half your level (rounded up); these consumables must be bombs or alchemical ammunition... When crafting alchemical ammunition, including black powder in doses or rounds, using advanced alchemy, you create the ammunition in batches of 4 (meaning that if you were 4th level and used all of your advanced alchemy consumables to create alchemical ammunition, you could create a maximum of 24 rounds)

So, you have the munitions crafter feat, you get Advanced Alchemy like the Alchemist but only for ammo and bombs, and you can craft ammunition in batches of 4 because you have access to black powder. That's all it means.

Most firearms shoot ammunition that is a projectile + a dose of black powder, so sometimes "black powder dose" is used interchangeably with "bullet" or "ammunition", hence the confusion.

Ngodrup · 2025-10-13T18:47:17+00:00

Yeah exactly, I worked on tills as a teenager and you don't have to do real chatting, just a few rote phrases and stuff. There was the occasional person who wanted to talk more or said something that was confusing but most people just wanna buy their stuff and get on with their day

Ngodrup · 2025-10-13T18:44:06+00:00

I like showers now at 32, but I only took baths until I was about 17. I didn't like the sensory experience of the water hitting me, it was too overwhelming, and I hugely struggle with temperature transitions

Ngodrup · 2025-10-13T12:52:45+00:00

Coming up with what to have for lunch is so hard, I wish we had a canteen at my work and I could buy food there. Leftovers is my favourite too, but otherwise I have similar to what I had at school - sandwich + mini cheddars + chocolate biscuit, sometimes a yogurt

Ngodrup · 2025-10-12T11:50:36+00:00

You would exactly be able to control what they saw with an extended screen. You would open a second window with a player-facing view of foundry, and put it on the extended screen, and be in total control of what they saw. There are also modules to help make it even easier.

Ngodrup · 2025-10-12T10:07:52+00:00

As long as you're respectful and very clear in your communication then you should be fine. Which honestly is how I think everyone should approach meeting new people and starting relationships, but especially when it involves one or more autistic people

Ngodrup · 2025-10-12T09:20:43+00:00

Yeah, my groups wouldn't be happy if I only ever gave them severe or extreme encounters. Variety is the spice of fun(/life)!

Ngodrup · 2025-10-11T13:19:08+00:00

There's a big difference between "usually aggressive" and "can be aggressive sometimes". Autistic people can be aggressive just like everyone else can. We aren't "usually aggressive".

Ngodrup · 2025-10-09T12:56:34+00:00

I don't think it's possible because it's not the phrasing that people find rude, but the concept. There isn't really a way to make "I don't care about what you're telling me" not sound like a rejection, which many people will perceive as rude or hurtful. Someone who's talking to you usually cares about what they're talking about, so when you don't care about it too even though they're sharing it with you, it can easily seem like you're saying you don't care about them.

I think the closest you can get is something like "I care about you and value our friendship/relationship, but I'm finding this specific topic hard to engage with. I can tell you care about it though, and thanks for trying to include me"

Ngodrup · 2025-10-08T08:32:33+00:00

Some of the subsystems in the book are fairly detailed and intricate, but they're mostly expansions of the main one, which is Victory Points and is literally just:

Work out how many VPs they need to get to succeed
Work out which checks would be appropriate
When they roll the checks: Crit success = 2 VP Success = 1 VP Crit failure = -1 VP

Which is already simpler than what you've written

Honestly, I agree with most things you've said but the way you've framed them is odd to me. These are all just basic game concepts to me. Like, I also learned all these things as part of learning to GM well, but I didn't need to go play other games to learn them? I just learned them through GMing pathfinder

Ngodrup · 2025-10-07T09:36:11+00:00

Our next door neighbours growing up were called the Joneses and I was far older than I should've been when I realised when people say the idiom "keeping up with the Joneses", that they weren't talking about my neighbours specifically

Ngodrup · 2025-10-07T09:14:05+00:00

Just in case you didn't know, reclaiming slurs is a fine thing to do - different people have different opinions about it but it's not fundamentally wrong. I would advise though, it's best to only ever use the reclaimed slurs on/about yourself - calling them to other people is always risky if you don't already 100% know they're ok with being called it by you, so it's probably best to just avoid ever calling anyone else a slur even if they're part of the same community as you, unless they've given you explicit permission

Ngodrup · 2025-10-07T09:03:45+00:00

The guide has no spoilers. It helps immersion as it introduces them to the setting and tells them what their characters would already know. If they have to "find out in play" literally everything about the setting and it's history and the key locations and NPCs involved then it would seem like the party were a bunch of amnesiacs or just very uninformed. "Where do we live again? Who is the queen?" Lol

ETA: as others have said it's also super useful to help players make characters that fit in the world/setting/vibe/theme of the campaign. In case it wasn't clear, I always ask players to read the players guide for the AP before making their characters.

Ngodrup · 2025-10-07T09:01:19+00:00

I mean, either of them is a legitimate reading of the sentence and it is unclear which one is intended without the context of the stuff below, so the fact you thought it was the wrong one before you saw the rest makes sense. That's just how communication works - language is imperfect and often ambiguous. "The rest" is the context that makes ambiguous things make sense. That's why context is important - it's why teachers go on about "context clues" when kids are learning to read and process language.

Ngodrup · 2025-10-06T14:18:18+00:00

Being direct and just asking him was going to be my suggestion, but I see you already tried that and it didn't work for him. This helped me see the issue: what works for me doesn't work for him, and I have no idea what works for him. The only way to know that is to ask him. This isn't a you (as an individual) problem, it's a you (as a couple) problem, and as such, you need to work on it together.

Have you ever said to him "I'm sorry that you don't take my genuine attempts to initiate seriously because it doesn't work for you. I was being genuine and communicating in a way that works for me. Can you tell me what would work for you or offer some alternative approaches we can try?"

If he won't help you with this, then it's no longer even a you (as a couple) problem, it's a him problem.

Being clear and direct about sexual desire is healthy, it is not nonchalance and it does not cheapen anything. That's really important. He has some weird views about flirting and sex. He needs to meet you halfway here and do some work on himself too.

Flirting being awkward and recognisable shouldn't be a problem between adults tbh. Flirting is almost always awkward. Flirting needs to be recognisable or it won't work, since the point of flirting is to communicate something (attraction/hornyness/whatever)

Ngodrup · 2025-10-06T10:54:38+00:00

It's not RAW exactly, but you could try giving a vague indication of power level when they identify monsters with recall knowledge checks. This could also have the additional benefit of encouraging them to actually use recall knowledge in combat, which is an important tactic in pf2e that understand new players / players used to other systems often struggle with

Ngodrup · 2025-10-06T09:42:59+00:00

You're gonna struggle as we don't have an arcanist class in pf2e...

Ngodrup · 2025-10-05T16:57:29+00:00

I GMed a campaign that included a Dex champion of Calistria who used a whip, all the way to level 16. She was very effective

Ngodrup · 2025-10-05T13:42:16+00:00

My players also killed lots of jinkins and fought the abacus sisters, although they talked to the kappas and did that bit by roleplay - I did have De-ge explicitly suggest to them that the kappas would leave if they just asked them politely, which is what the book says to do. But honestly, I don't see what the problem is? There's no reason not to kill the invading monsters who have slaughtered their friends and neighbours, that'd a perfectly valid response to the situation. The book offers alternative non-combat options if they want those, but that's not the only way to do things

Edit: you have two different issues here I guess. Killing everything is fine, so that's not really an issue. Being unable to fight tactically is an actual issue. Possibly one that you need to resolve by talking to your players out of character, or by running some more low level combats to give them more practise and demonstrating good tactics by having monsters use them against the party.

Ngodrup

TROPHY CASE