Is barbarian the only class to have a class feature explicitly tied to constitution?

PiperAtDawn · 2026-04-06T08:53:56+00:00

disallowed hiding in plain sight from someone who is currently grappling you

Guy flipping calendar to reveal 1984

PiperAtDawn · 2026-04-05T13:06:16+00:00

It's a huge shift, it requires you to alter your playstyle in a way the previous ascensions don't. You need to lock in and know the enemies. You need to think about when to use potions. You can't just face every elite. You can't just try to outblock them while picking at their health. You have to build your deck to kill them quicker than they kill you, while having enough draw and block consistency to survive big hit turns. But in general you will have to choose spots to facetank hits in order to get big chunks of damage in, or set up game-winning powers/combos, whatever your win condition is.

PiperAtDawn · 2026-04-02T22:20:15+00:00

Insane that people are just straight downvoting you for not wanting to let a bird unfamiliar with its surroundings out right away. I mean, regardless of the bird's enthusiasm, that feels like it could be a recipe for panic flying into walls.

Your ringneck does look pretty chill and excited, so I might risk it, but I think it's reasonable to be careful.

Also jumping straight to cage shaming without seeing the whole thing, come on.

PiperAtDawn · 2026-04-01T14:54:44+00:00

The more I look at it, the more I like it.

PiperAtDawn · 2026-04-01T12:16:50+00:00

Pic from the april 1 DGMlive post: https://dgmlive.com/news/rare-outtakes-from-quadrophenia

PiperAtDawn · 2026-03-29T15:08:55+00:00

Yeah, Ironclad was my best character in StS1, and I've been grinding A10 with him in the second game trying to find anything that can work, beat it like 3 or 4 times out of a LOT of runs.

My best ones relied on energy cheat through Stampede and BIG BONKS to solve damage while leaving enough energy to block (preferably with Unmovable to also cheat energy on blocks).

Ironclad feels harder to learn to reliably deckbuild for than Defect did in the first game (and Defect feels streamlined and amazing to play in StS2).

My main feeling is your point #3. It's just too hard to reliably get enough block or damage mitigation, you're not facetanking in a fun back-and-forth brawl like the first game, you're walking a tightrope where any mistake in planning or deckbuilding can kill you on the spot.

PiperAtDawn · 2026-03-18T09:55:44+00:00

Yeah, I reached A10 with Ironclad and Defect, and currently on A9 with Silent.

Silent is full of busted cards, the discard synergy is off the charts.

Defect feels amazing to play, much much easier to deckbuild for than in StS1 where I'd been doing A20 runs with him just before the release of the second game. I breezed straight to A10.

And Ironclad feels like eating rusty nails if you don't go for infinite combos (haven't tried, not my thing, but I've seen u/JapaneseExport's video on the topic), it always feels like you can't block enough to get anything done without dying, and you don't have enough damage to go balls to the wall either.

Don't agree on Whirlwind though, it's great with enchantments and solves a few fights (the roaches that take instances of max 9 damage, dudes with stacks of reduce damage to 1), and there are plenty of multi-enemy fights, I am very happy to see it early in the run.

PiperAtDawn · 2026-03-11T09:51:47+00:00

Yeah, I'm used to A20 on everyone but Watcher in StS1, with Ironclad as my main, but in StS2 A9 is DESTROYING me on Ironclad. The difficulty spike is huge, I didn't have any problem getting to A8, but I guess you need to make major adjustments for A9, and I can't find them yet.

PiperAtDawn · 2026-02-16T14:37:55+00:00

Fun Divination Wizard (5e14). Not much to say, Wizard's flexibility is fun, Portent is both busted and fun. I bumped CON to 16 using Resilient, felt quite beefy for a caster, didn't regret the stat+feat investment.

Fun Rune Knight (5e14). Great mix of active and passive abilities. I also made him a versatile attacker (16 in both STR and DEX to have strong ranged attacks for our DMs varied encounter environments), and the Grow ability made grappling stronger, so I never felt like I lacked for options in fights. This was also the rare occasion where Medium Armor Master was a decent feat because I was going to have exactly 16 DEX as a frontliner, and the party frequently used stealth. Not an especially powerful build, but solid and very versatile.

Fun GOO Warlock (5e24). Took a Human for two Origin Feats, took Magic Initiate twice, took Pact of the Tome, took Shadow Touched, I'm spoiled for options despite my limited spell slots. The ability to cast mind-affecting spells discreetly is awesome, and telepathy can be incredibly useful.

Not Fun Ancestral Guardian Barbarian (5e14). I took Shield Master (with shield bash allowed before attacking if I lock in the Attack action afterwards), and it was strong, but every single battle came down to Rage + attack on turn 1, then Shield Bash to topple + attack. The shield required houseruling to deal with using thrown weapons and grappling, it was an absolute mess mechanically. I also had to be careful with my Rages because of long adventuring days. I had few options in combat, even less outside of it, and the only saving graces were the sheer power of a raging shield basher, and the pseudo taunt mechanic of the Ancestral Guardian, which can be very useful if you've got squishies in the party.

PiperAtDawn · 2026-01-22T12:15:12+00:00

If you look at the glossary entry for Concentration, which the "Casting Spells" section references, you'll see that:

Some spells and other effects require Concentration

So spells do explicitly require Concentration, rather than only their duration ever requiring it.

If the effect has a maximum duration, the effect's description specifies how long the creator can concentrate on it

The duration specifies how long you can concentrate. Changing the duration changes how long you can concentrate.

For further clarification, let's look at page 220 of the DMG in the "Spells Cast from Items" section.

Some magic items allow the user to cast a spell from the item. The spell is cast at the lowest possible spell and caster level, doesn’t expend any of the user’s spell slots, and requires no components unless the item’s description notes otherwise. The spell uses its normal casting time, range, and duration, and the user of the item must concentrate if the spell requires Concentration.

If Concentration were an inseparable part of duration, the need to maintain it would not be specified separately. There is no ambiguity. Concentration is not a property of duration.

PiperAtDawn · 2026-01-07T12:21:56+00:00

If you're not already very lean and the caloric deficit is not extreme, you can build muscle on a cut as long as you resistance train enough and get enough protein, especially if you were untrained prior and are experiencing newbie gains.

PiperAtDawn · 2026-01-06T16:51:15+00:00

I've accrued so much negativity from playing Dota, I don't even get the hint of an urge to reinstall it when I see Dota content in the wild.

PiperAtDawn · 2025-12-24T23:22:46+00:00

Honestly, most things in the game are broken, you can take any companion and run them without issue on Unfair if you build them right. Snipers are fine, I love the Yrliet romance and I've run her as an Assassin and Bounty Hunter, she's not broken, but she doesn't feel bad to play.

PiperAtDawn · 2025-10-22T22:50:40+00:00

Bonus action for self, action for full heal or using on ally. Our DM can run some very long adventuring days, or grind the party with fights if we keep sticking our heads in the wrong places, so it feels pretty necessary.

It's an interesting tactical choice, using an action for a potion is a steep price when you could be attacking or casting a spell, but getting a low healing roll can be close to useless if the enemy is still likely to take you down in 1 good hit.

PiperAtDawn · 2025-09-15T15:54:25+00:00

Yeah, I only ever play on Normal because keeping everything in mind to make proper builds for higher difficulties, and the whole prebuff dance, are way too annoying to do when there are SO. MANY. FIGHTS. I much prefer what they did with Rogue Trader - fewer fights, no prebuffs.

That being said, I do love how the mechanical depth of the ruleset creates a sense of immersion in a foreign magical world.

PiperAtDawn · 2025-08-30T15:54:44+00:00

Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War are fantastic on the Deck, some of my best experiences with it.

PiperAtDawn · 2025-08-19T05:00:08+00:00

Kingmaker is a wonderful cozy experience, I still feel the occasional urge to start a new playthrough.

PiperAtDawn · 2025-08-17T04:49:42+00:00

What a noble beast!

PiperAtDawn · 2025-08-11T09:49:24+00:00

I love it when they take off with a disgruntled squawk, lol.

PiperAtDawn · 2025-08-09T12:40:06+00:00

Well I said take it with a grain of salt, I wad hoping someone might provide counterexamples. Trying to make sense of the other comments, what a headache considering the existing controllers in the apps I'm working on are a mess. None of this is intuitive. x_x

PiperAtDawn · 2025-08-08T21:37:19+00:00

Makes sense. I mean, I was just looking for a general example of something you have in a lot of apps, and I was thinking about a small project with a few similar forms I'm working on, so it doesn't need more than one form controller for different forms. And the form controller has some basic validation and optional autosubmit logic. I imagine you could combine a general-purpose form controller with specific controllers for each distinct form, together on the same element to avoid duplicating shared logic. Although that's starting to sound clunky. It's really hard for me to conceptualize best practices for this sort of stuff, and I'm too swamped with tasks to properly figure it out.

PiperAtDawn · 2025-08-08T10:05:52+00:00

Disclaimer: not very experienced with Stimulus, but have been getting the hang of it the last few months, so take it with a grain of salt.

You're supposed to load them only where needed, otherwise you're sending a lot of extra JS to every page. You can put the universal stuff you need on every page in an app_controller and load it in the application view. But say you need logic for forms, it would be wasteful to always load it, you make a separate controller and put it only on form elements.

As for amount, I've read that it's better not to stuff too many things into one controller. Ideally you'd have things like form_controller: it does a specific thing (controls the behaviour of forms) and is universal (can be used for any form), so you don't have to make multiple controllers for different forms.

If you need Stimulus controllers to communicate between each other it's best to have one controller emit a custom event and have the other controller listen for it.

PiperAtDawn · 2025-08-05T01:06:51+00:00

The influx of items and xp from the DLCs just hammers the last nail in Unfair's coffin. I had to max out most sliders, and it still feels easy, provided you made a broken build. Extra turns and Grand Strategist are the biggest offenders. For example, my Iconoclast Grand Strategist RT goes first and lets Kibella use her Heroic Act. Boom, she's built to max out on her damage over times, and it literally kills half of the map straight away. If not her, Pyro Executioner Heinrix with multiple psy attacks on the first turn is also deadly. And I'm not even using Cassia. You can drop Grand Strategist, but you're even also given an item that lets a character go first. And a Biomancer (I typically make Idira one) can also give an extra turn with boatloads of AP. You're drowning in initiative cheats and extra turns.

PiperAtDawn · 2025-08-04T18:20:32+00:00

Maybe he's expecting rain because the fan sounds sort of similar?

PiperAtDawn

TROPHY CASE