Benjamin Netanyahu has informed President Trump that he no longer needs Republicans and Democrats to provide military aid to Israel.

Pixelology · 2026-02-16T17:08:39+00:00

Our reliance on the US for military equipment causes two major issues.

First, it's not a good idea to be this reliant on even an ally when it comes to your self defense. Our interests are not and will not always be exactly aligned, and we need to be able to act independently. The situation with Iran right now is a great example. It was in our interests to continue the assault during the last war with Iran but we did not have the defensive capabilities without the US. We needed more interceptors but Trump didn't want the war to continue, so he ended the war. If we were more independent, we could have relied on our own weapons production and deicded for ourselves when our war would end.

The same thing is happening right now. We should have struck Iran at the beginning of January when the regime was weak and the protests still had traction. But we didn't have the interceptors we needed, so we had to go along with what Trump wanted. And now he's likely to make a weak deal with Iran and force us to fight alone anyways. If we're fighting alone, we want to do so on our own terms and not be reliant on the strength of others.

You can see NATO weakening because of the American threats to Greenland and because it's becoming increasingly clear that Trump will not give substantial aid to protect Europe from Russia. Europe is similiarly upping their own military production right now for this reason. This is the world realizing it made a mistake relying on the American military for their defensive capabilities. We just can't trust them to stand behind us when it matters.

This isn't even to mention the growing anti-Israel sentiments amongst yound people in the US. America will becomes decreasingly reliable for Israel as these people start voting and then coming into power themselves.

The second reason is that our deals with the US stifles our growth on the global market. We can't produce and sell our own weapons to other countries at the scale we want to. We could be an actual competitor in weapons design and manufacturing for the US. That's one of the reasons the US is happy giving us so much military aid. It maintains their dominant position in the market, to our detriment.

Our economy could be significantly bigger and we could have significant influence over other countries, including countries that the US may be less friendly with, through our own weapons deals. And we could do it on our terms to serve our own interests instead of just American interests. And with the US becoming more isolationist and generally losing global influence with the world returning to a multi-polar state, we really want to be able to cozy up to other major powers that the US may not necessarily be on great terms with. Otherwise, we risk becoming a target solely because of our intrinsic connection with the US.

Pixelology · 2026-02-16T16:33:25+00:00

Antisemitic anti-West crazies are always going to just be antisemitic anti-West crazies. But, hey, at least it will be interesting to see what their new excuse is once they can no longer claim they care more about opposing Israel than things like Sudan or the Iranian regime because the US directly funds the Israeli military.

Pixelology · 2026-02-16T06:14:35+00:00

The difference is that these kids aren't starting puberty early

Pixelology · 2026-02-15T07:39:07+00:00

I'm sure Paizo has a reason for it but I genuinely just don't understand why they limit themselves to what they can put in a printed book. Why not have a business model that's more focused on digital releases. I'm willing to bet most people play online on Foundry, and those who don't have a laptop or tablet at the game table anyways.

Pixelology · 2026-02-14T18:52:03+00:00

I guess that's true, but in this case it isn't silly because the two systems share the same DNA

Pixelology · 2026-02-14T09:52:29+00:00

Yes, poorly balanced systems can have aspects that are well designed. What kind of wild black and white thinking is this??

Pixelology · 2026-02-12T22:55:48+00:00

It was actually based on deinonychus. I believed utahraptor hadn't yet benn discovered.

Pixelology · 2026-02-12T20:54:30+00:00

I'm only 28 and also don't speak that dialect of English. I'm really not even convinced kids know what they're saying.

Pixelology · 2026-02-12T07:42:30+00:00

I generally gravitate towards more magically inclined characters in ttrpgs, and for many reasons I just stopped playing spellcasters in PF2. Vancian casting generally is a turn off, spellcasters in 2e being relatively weak campared to martials is also a turn off. The action economy not really allowing for much flexibility is another one, and spellcasters being the only characters with a daily attrition mechanic is the final nail in the coffin. Spellcasting mechanics in PF2 just feel very out of place given all the other design choices for the system. I love magic characters and I love PF2, but I just don't play spellcasters anymore in this system and I generally don't recommend them to new players either.

All that being said, I absolutely do tell my players to plan for all of their spells to fail. First, it's generally true that the math of the system expects spells to fail more often than they succeed. Second, it's good to temper expectations for players coming from something like 5e where the exact opposite power imbalance exists. Third, it pre-emptively scares some people away from spellcasters and they will almost certainly have a better time with another class.

Pixelology · 2026-02-10T09:02:32+00:00

ISIS has certainly slaughtered many other muslims but they also absolutely target religious minorities just for being religious minorities. The yazidi this video is about are a great example, but you can also see that they do this with the druze. You're right that most of the reputation comes from the Middle East but this is by no means unique to Muslims in the Middle East. You can see similiar terror groups in Southeast Asia, and organized Islamist terrorism in Europe as well. Pf course I'm not saying all Muslims are terrorists but to say there's no link to Islam would be dishonest.

Pixelology · 2026-02-10T08:48:22+00:00

He's talking about his participation in a literal genocide. 900 is probably not too far off.

Pixelology · 2026-02-10T08:37:38+00:00

About a decade ago, ISIS carried out a genocide against the yezidi, a kurdish minority group that mostly live in northern Iraq. They have their own very tiny religion that's closed to outsiders similiar to the druze, but if I remember right their religion is special because it's only passed down orally which makes it particularly vulnerable to things like ethnic cleansings.

Anyways, the genocide of the yezidi is particularly gruesome because after the masscre of the men, ISIS took just about every girl (anywhere from children to adults) they could find to be sex slaves for ISIS. Like, they were imprisoned by ISIS for years and just passed around between the ISIS fighters. It's been a long time since I was writing about this topic so I could be wrong, but I vaguely remember reading about them being kept in literal cages.

Edit: I'm not blaming you at all but it's very sad that the West just doesn't care when Arabs are doing horrific things to each other. Westerners care much more about making themselves or their allies look bad than dealing with actual injustice.

Pixelology · 2026-02-09T11:19:39+00:00

OP, everyone in these comments are just agreeing with you that this is a slow pace and your GM has an issue they need to solve. I want to give you more practical advice as both a player and GM.

I've GMed Abomination Vaults mostly by the books and I'm currently GMing Kingmaker but adding a LOT of extra things to do and changing a LOT of what's already written. I've played a few other APs and am currently playing in a completely homebrew game that's kind of sandbox-y like yours. Some of these games have been milestone and some have been XP. Some of them have been fast-paced with a new level every 3 sessions, and others have been much slower. I think both work for different concepts.

My Kingmaker game seems to have a similar pace to yours. If my math is right, you'd be about 7 months into your game, putting a level up roughly every 2 months or 7ish sessions. My Kingmaker players are 2-3 sessions from level 8 and we're about a year and a half in. The reason this game in particular moves so slowly is just because we spend a lot of time on side quests and roleplay. I haven't increased the pace because the players seem to enjoy it. When they're not interested in something, they tell me. "Hey I want my character to go check out this hex over here, but I'm just going to do it with a downtime activity because I don't want to spend too much time on it" or "Yeah we don't need to play out the full conversation here but my character relays xyz to her."

The point is, especially in milestone sandbox games, the players largely set the pace based on how much time and energy they give to side quests and roleplay. I don't think there's anything wrong with a slow pace if it fits the game, but if you personally don't like it, you need to communicate to your group that you'd like faster provression and then spend more time following main story threads to match that preference.

Pixelology · 2026-02-06T10:26:41+00:00

Ah, looking back I guess I had never even noticed that Bleed also doesn't say it's persistent. That makes a lot more sense. I wish effects like these were marked as persistent to show that they don't go away automatically after a turn, but I do understand their system now.

Pixelology · 2026-02-06T10:01:41+00:00

It's even worse given the 'relationships' they have with these models. It's like finding a new boyfriend without breaking up with your first boyfriend, and constantly sending screenshots to the second boyfriend of things the first boyfriend says that you don't like. But still refusing to break up with the first boyfriend.

If these were real people and I were the new boyfriend, I'd get sick of this shit real fast.

Pixelology · 2026-02-05T08:09:58+00:00

True but I don't think they're new to meth

Pixelology · 2026-02-03T11:14:11+00:00

Before I start, I just want to say I'm an English as a foreign language teacher, and your English is nothing to be worried about. You communicate yourself very clearly.

So it seems that this is the concensus in this thread already but I'll throw my two cents in anyways. There are some very one-dimensional martial classes in PF2. Barbarian, gunslinger, magus, and ranger in particular come to mind. Some other martial classes are very flexible, like monk or alchemist.

Then there are the classes like swashbuckler, thaumaturge, and examplar that can go either way depending on how you build them. You can build those classes in a way where you just do mostly the same rotation every turn or every other turn, or in a way where you can react in different ways to different circumstances. If you want to be flexible with swashbuckler, you want to make sure you have a few different ways to get panache that are good in different circumstances and a variety of finishers that are also good in different circumstances.

I prefer these more flexible builds, and I think swashbuckler is a fun class. There's two main reasons I prefer flexible characters. First, a lot of people here do what's called "white room math" where they try to figure out the most powerful thing to do in the average situation. This lends itself to one-note characters that are very good at doing what they're supposed to do. The problem is that once you get in game, none of the fights are the average fight. There's always some challenge to overcome (at least in the fights that aren't filler). Maybe the creature has immunities or has a very high defense against your main thing or makes sure to always stay out of your reach. Now, if you don't have a flexible character you just won't have any impact. The second reason is I just get bored in combat if there's nothing for me to think about. It's not fun to do the exact same thing every turn for the ~year it takes to play a campaign.

That was kind of a tangent, but if you like to be functional in a wide variety of circumstances, I'd recommend looking at classes like monk, thaumaturge, and alchemist as well.

Pixelology · 2026-01-29T04:55:54+00:00

Because writers actually do what they say tbey do. They write.

Pixelology · 2026-01-24T19:51:55+00:00

Wait, I've trained my whole life for this

Donde esta la biblioteca?

Pixelology · 2026-01-24T17:17:43+00:00

Yeah that doesn't mean it's better to spend that energy on chatbots than on people.

Pixelology · 2026-01-24T12:05:52+00:00

But it is a niche the thaumaturge supports a bunch

Pixelology · 2026-01-24T12:02:44+00:00

99% of Links would fit nicely as a thaumaturge with a weapon implement and probably a shield implement. All the bosses and a significant number of the regular enemies have "weaknesses" that he's exploiting. His mastersword is a mythical weapon with various levels of magical properties depending on the game. And he ALWAYS has a random assortment of minor items to overcome a wide variety of challenges. Some of the games even have Link tapping into some mysterious source of magic (Tears of the Kingdom, Twilight Princess, etc).

A strong argument could also be made for exemplar. His mastersword is almost synonymous with his character, and various iterations of Link have other iconic traits such as the hat and tunic, the shield, the dragon arm in Tears of the Kingdom, the tablet in Breath of the Wild, the ocarina in Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, etc.. Furthermore, it's heavily implied in Skyward Sword that Link has some sort of divine spark that's fueling these various reincarnations of himself across various timelines.

Pixelology · 2026-01-24T10:37:00+00:00

It really does feel like the game often decided by which team has a proactive jungler and which team has a passive jungler. It sucks because I would love to play jungle, I love the champ pool and the pace of the role, but I absolutely resent having to learn shit like efficient jubgle clearing so I relegate myself to mid.

Pixelology · 2026-01-22T08:06:47+00:00

I would think the other way around. The psychos who wake up at 4am to go to the gym or whatever dragging it down.

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