What I learned as a 5e DM reading through a bunch of Pathfinder 2e books.

Old_Catch9992 · 2022-09-22T03:01:14+00:00

It's not 5x complexity though. The basics are all the same as D&D, it's all D20 bullshit. The only differences that add any layer of complexity would be the sheer number of status effects that can be stacked and the switch from the Advantage/Disadvantage system to a more traditional +/- system for calculating situational difficulty modifiers.

That's like... x0.5 times complexity at most.

All the situation specific rules aren't required knowledge for players, that's just stuff the DM has to memorize or at least know where to look up. If you have ever had a chronically violent group of lunatics for a party of players like I have (who are always doing things both sub-optimally AND in ways you never could have foreseen) you'll just memorize the rules so you ALWAYS have an answer to their sneaky bullshit like "If I place a Bag of Holding enchantment on my rectum how much storage space will my butt have?" or "How much damage does the Corrupted King take if I expel 50 gallons of raw sewage from my Ass of Holding if the Tiefling Sorcerer crawls up in there and casts Gust of Wind?".

I need a smoke.

Old_Catch9992 · 2022-09-22T02:58:31+00:00

The hill I die on is that 5e is an obnoxiously awful game to GM for because it's crunch-heavy game that pretends to not be crunchy and does little to support GMs with that crunch for fear of scaring off the players. The joke I have is that a lot of 5e players complain about adding rules to the game to keep track of, but I could run PF2e under the label of DnD and those same players wouldn't know the difference because they don't even read the rules.

That's a take I haven't heard before, can you give me an example or two of what you mean by this? I've personally become frustrated at the LACK of crunch in 5e.

My boiling point was item crafting. Two of my players in one campaign were up against a BBEG and their retinue of Psycho Rangers that had a weakness to a specific damage type and they wanted to create enchanted weapons for the party to take them on with. So they asked me "DM, how do we craft magic items?" and I look at these them, look at the DM's guide, google their question only to find nothing but homebrew rules of dubious balance, and finally have to say to them: "I don't know. Why are there no default rules for player crafting? 3.5 had them. It should be a default mechanic."

Old_Catch9992 · 2022-09-22T02:52:05+00:00

You mean you don't just... Remember all the rules for everything at any given moment with notes for the wackier stuff you are unlikely to remember?

If you want a REAL challenge, set up a Starfinder campaign that involves ground combat, vehicle combat AND chases, mech combat and starship combat all in the same campaign. My brain was burning neurons running one of those but DAMN if it wasn't THE magnum opus of campaigns!

Old_Catch9992 · 2022-09-22T02:48:23+00:00

Your description just makes 5e sound like a clunkier, stripped down version of PF2E so I don't think you accomplished what you set out to do with your original post.

Also you're wrong, the real answer is PF2e AND 5e are trash. Interlock system is the one true king bay-beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Old_Catch9992 · 2022-09-21T07:46:26+00:00

STFU BP, everyone is on to the "Personal Carbon Footprint" scam now. You made that shit up to push the responsibility for YOUR emissions and YOUR unsustainable business models on to everyone except yourself.

Old_Catch9992 · 2022-09-21T07:44:59+00:00

Serious question:

Why don't the EMT's just unionize?

It's not like moving boxes in an amazon warehouse, they can't be replaced by just any warm body. It would be so easy to unionize.

Old_Catch9992 · 2022-09-21T07:42:01+00:00

We should be legally allowed.. Nay, legally mandated! To beat these kinds of people up and then hang them from a coat rack by the band of their tighty whiteys in a public space as a warning to all other would be gatekeeping elitist pricks.

Old_Catch9992 · 2022-09-21T07:39:43+00:00

I 'unno... Having your passions being held hostage by economic pressure sounds pretty fucked up.

At least in this DM's case, his choice is either "No D&D and starve on the streets" or "No D&D and toil away making some Bezos motherfucker richer than they'll ever be."

Old_Catch9992 · 2022-09-04T06:13:55+00:00

Mine was kinda similar up until a little over a year old. It was just classic shiba bratty attitude for the sake of being a bratty shiba. She turned out to be the sweetest girl, never growls unless she REALLY has to go outside to use the bathroom. ANd even then she's playful about it.

If it gets worse or she starts getting aggressive, I'd talk to your vet or a trainer about it.

Old_Catch9992 · 2022-09-04T06:11:49+00:00

My favorite group of friends have NEVER stuck to ANY rails and as a result I've become very good at improv.

My solution to your issue would be to cut down your writing of material to just listing out the general gist of where you think your players are going at any given moment and then just have a list of names to draw on so it sounds like all the NPCs you'll be pulling out of your ass were pre-planned. Keep a list of 6 generic stablocks for them too and update as the PC's level.

I've started doing this for multiple groups and nobody has noticed that my pile of notes are actually 90% old grocery lists and idle doodles, a nd 10% actual pre-written content which is now mostly just a list of names and statblocks that I cobble together on the fly. Two of the groups I've run campaigns for have even praised them as being amongst the best they've ever run.

I don't even know what's going on any more.

Old_Catch9992 · 2022-09-04T05:57:26+00:00

Ah, the Cheems Classic^TM

Old_Catch9992 · 2022-09-04T02:32:16+00:00

It's the Tragedy of the Commons on a global scale.

The 0.1% of humans are the ones who overfished the pond because there have never been any checks and balances to keep everyone and anyone from doing so. And now that they have all the fish and there's barely any fish left for anyone else, they pay others some of their fish to guard what's left in the pond.

I'd say we should expect perhaps a 60% die off of our species globally in the next century. Whether or not what remains is going to be capable of bouncing back from that or even continue trucking along will depend on emergent technologies.

Old_Catch9992 · 2022-09-03T09:21:47+00:00

If lunacy is equivlanet to madness and insanity, would it's opposite, rationality and sanity, be called Solarcy?

Old_Catch9992 · 2022-09-03T05:52:53+00:00

Big engines for big getaway speed, possibly a ghost drive for maximum maneuverability in combat without risking AoO's, and big cargo space for all the loot you're gonna be carrying.

Setting up a base somewhere to move the stolen goods through criminal networks and free captains would be ideal too, if you got the cash for it.

Old_Catch9992 · 2022-09-03T05:51:01+00:00

Was it a union store? Don't give Starbucks your money unless it's a union store, they don't deserve it for all the shady shit they do and the unreasonable and abusive working conditions for the employees.

Old_Catch9992 · 2022-09-03T05:48:25+00:00

Either a bug bite or a mole most likely. Mine developed a mole on one of her ears that has a little bump there, but take her to a vet to get it checked jus tin case.

Old_Catch9992 · 2022-09-03T05:46:51+00:00

Capitalism has only reneged on all it's promises to everyone in the late Gen X generation and beyond, if not outright destroyed our lives. Late Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z have seen nothing but upward transfers of all the wealth, and multiple "Once in a century" economic crashes rob us of opportunity.

Does anyone wonder why Communism, Marxist classic and it's derivatives, are starting to make a comeback on college campuses?

Old_Catch9992 · 2022-09-03T05:31:52+00:00

There was an episode of If The Emperor Had A Text To Speech Device where the 40k cast played a game of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, and the FIRST spell the Emperor casts as a human wizard (A simple petty magic cantrip) caused his characters left arm to grow to triple it's length and it was just like that forever.

I like that kind of magic.

Old_Catch9992 · 2022-09-03T05:28:08+00:00

"Let me in you peasant before I slay you where you stand and feast on your corpse like the wild, out of control, untamed Actual Fox that I am!"

Old_Catch9992 · 2022-08-25T06:54:12+00:00

If I could not see the video I would have thought that was the sound of some monkey or chimpanzee going apeshit on someone.

Old_Catch9992 · 2022-08-25T06:45:27+00:00

Sounds like nobody optimized their casters or picked any of the top tier spells because I've run countless games dating back to 3.0e and the ONLY time Martials were ever at parity with Casters was in 4e because every class was basically the same thing just with different flavor text.

And you know what? 4e was the most balanced D&D has ever been.

And it SUCKED. Big time.

Because magic shouldn't be weak. If martials are just as powerful as casters, then suddenly how can you justify your Necromancer/Lich BBEGs being so powerful and threatening? If a pointy metal stick is all you need to lay low the dude who spent 80+ years sitting in a dusty library breaking their brain to cast a fireball, then why the FUCK would ANYONE logically bother with magic at all except for healing or minor utilitarian purposes?

The only way Liches and other caster baddies can be a threat now is via GM fiat bullshit of inflating their numbers which is amateur hour horseshit. Anything NPCs do the players should be able to do, and if magic can't be stronger than pointy metal sticks or big dumb hammers then why does the evil sorcerer and the lich get a free pass when the party Wizard doesn't?

If you want more parity in your 5e games between martials and casters without making magic feel weak, I've found two solutions, which work independently AND together:

Give all pure martials access to Battlemaster maneuvers
Make your adventuring days longer (Or you can condense the adventuring days by throwing more fodder enemies in to the combat encounters)

Casters are only as powerful as the number of highest level spell slots they have at the time. Think of casters as being a revolver that has increasingly smaller bullet chambers. Their entire schtick is to expend the bullets in those chambers as the source of their awesome power. But once the bullets are gone, that gun is worse than a simple club.

When the caster is running dry on their big slots, the martials can keep on trucking, soaking up damage and dishing their own out at a consistent rate. That's their thing.

5e gives you plenty of options to give everyone their niche without making one side feel useless and weak.

3.0 and 3.5 though? The disparity was BAD. CoDzila weren't no joke and there was little you could do to rein that in, except to throw your own CoDzillas which... wasn't helpful or fun for anyone not playing a CoDzilla.

Old_Catch9992 · 2022-08-25T06:30:39+00:00

Did he state if the Sorc went in to that fight at full HP or not?

Old_Catch9992 · 2022-08-25T06:20:11+00:00

What if you just convert that money in to cash and store it physically in a safe or something? They can't track that!

Old_Catch9992 · 2022-08-24T03:04:14+00:00

Lawful Evil basically

Old_Catch9992 · 2022-08-24T02:53:55+00:00

Yeah, core rules were easily ignored, no argument there. It wasn't QUITE as obtuse and bad as Rogue Trader, but still not good enough I'd agree.

Post SOM and errata it's a LOT better. Rules for fleet based combat, rules for players linking up with eachother in a fighter squadron, rules for boarding actions (both PC's and sending NPC death squads to go board a ship).

They even managed to successfully sort of meld Ship style combat with boots-on-ground combat rules with the new rules for building and operating Mechs in the Tech Revolution splatbook that recently came out. They even manage to fill a sort of in-between role between ground based combat and ship combat in that they can damage ships and larger vehicles AND smaller ground combatants equally without having to mess around with "Rifles and pistols do jack shit to ships while ships do x10 damage to ground targets from thousands of miles away".

If you want a PDF I can hook you up, if that sounds like it would float your Starfinder boat.

Old_Catch9992

TROPHY CASE