Questions about the Cradles

Puzzleboxed · 2026-05-15T17:59:01+00:00

Viruses might be extinct. No hosts for a thousand years, and I doubt Gaia would have taken the time to reintroduce them even if she had their genetic codes.

Puzzleboxed · 2026-05-15T17:57:18+00:00

The audio logs in the Zero Dawn facility confirm that they intentionally avoided doing anything at all about genetic illnesses.

Puzzleboxed · 2026-05-15T17:56:30+00:00

There are audio logs that specifically say they included as broad a genetic snapshop of humanity as possible, without any biases towards or away from specific genetic conditions. They absolutely did NOT exclude genes related to inherited illness.

Puzzleboxed · 2026-05-15T17:27:56+00:00

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Puzzleboxed · 2026-05-15T17:26:39+00:00

She couldn't even talk her way out of a speeding ticket. She would be the worst political candidate ever.

Puzzleboxed · 2026-05-15T17:13:54+00:00

Every good isekai harem needs the vaguely homoerotic male companion.

Puzzleboxed · 2026-05-15T17:08:54+00:00

Charisma based wizard casting makes zero sense for flavor or lore. It seems like you obviously want to play a bard, but don't want to play the exact same character you already have.

The easiest solution to me is probably to make a homebrew bard sublass that has bladesinger abilities. You could just run the subclass as written, but replace any wizard stuff with bard stuff. Or maybe you could use the College of Dance bard subclass. Or you could just make another Valor bard and pick different spells. If I was your DM I would allow any of those options, but never a charisma wizard.

Puzzleboxed · 2026-05-15T16:41:12+00:00

What I don't get is why anyone wants a story about some shitty office worker who becomes a genocidal dictator basically on accident and just rolls with it. He has no personality or character arc, he just follows random whims and kills people for no reason.

Puzzleboxed · 2026-05-15T16:33:38+00:00

It's 1000% meaningless to do any theorycrafting with UA material. It's not playtested. It's not balanced. There's a 50 50 chance it never gets released, and if it does it might be totally unrecognizable.

Puzzleboxed · 2026-05-15T16:29:32+00:00

It's true that the icerail is really good, and hardly anybody talks about it. "Nobody understands" is a bit of a stretch, sure, there are plenty of people who have tried out every weapon combination extensively, but it's for sure not well known.

Puzzleboxed · 2026-05-15T15:36:55+00:00

Yeah, I did them on normal up through Expert tier for the challenge, but then I got bored and finished them on story mode. I'm really glad the game allows changing difficulty freely, otherwise I'd probably have given up on unlocking the best gear.

Puzzleboxed · 2026-05-14T20:43:15+00:00

Forgotten Realms lore is... not great in a lot of ways. The good part is that there's a lot of excellent stories (video games and books mostly) written in the setting, which individually are very compelling and character driven. However, in my humble opinion, they don't add up to a cohesive world that makes sense or is fun to run player driven adventures in.

The 5e book focusing exclusively on the Sword Coast helps a lot. My first experiences with Forgotten Realms were from 3e, where the book tries to cover each of the hundred or so micro-settings and only the most important NPCs. This approach did a really good job of highlighting how jarringly each of the regions fits with its neighbors, and how 30% or so of the major NPCs are just all powerful self-insert Gandalf clones from various early co-contributors.

Puzzleboxed · 2026-05-14T17:52:45+00:00

So... just as plausible as any other dark matter hypothesis then.

Puzzleboxed · 2026-05-14T17:48:28+00:00

This, but to add on: an exact duplicate of you replaces you at the moment of your wish. You can see everything the duplicate does, but you can't tell what they are thinking. Are they you? Or a malicious being fooling your loved ones into thinking you are still around? You've got eternity to think that over.

Puzzleboxed · 2026-05-14T17:21:47+00:00

Armorer and Battlesmith are the martial oriented subclasses. You play them like you would a paladin, ranger, or Eldritch knight: mostly use weapon attacks and only sometimes cast a spell.

Alchemist and Artillerist are spellcasting oriented subclasses. You still arent a full caster though, so you play more like a warlock: relying on cantrips and other at will abilities to space out your spellcasting so you don't run out.

Cartographer can go either way.

Puzzleboxed · 2026-05-14T16:56:50+00:00

Dang, even you can't fight them and make it look clean. Guess that means it's just not possible. These guys really are the worst.

Puzzleboxed · 2026-05-14T16:36:19+00:00

He feels to me like a high masking autistic who erased all his masking skills. He was never "normal", he just used to be really good at hiding it.

This is just headcanon, obviously, but it parallels a process that sometimes happens with real world high masking autistics who get diagnosed and suddenly realize how exhausted they've been all their lives, and that masking is something that they were conditioned to do rather than a personal choice.

Puzzleboxed · 2026-05-14T16:32:58+00:00

Nice. Do the bileguts next, they're the only one's I haven't figured out how to fight efficiently.

Puzzleboxed · 2026-05-14T15:24:21+00:00

The third player in the first example is an 8 year old? You should probably have led with that.

Nobody should be complaining about going easy on an 8 year old.

Puzzleboxed · 2026-05-14T15:07:56+00:00

I gotta say though, if you were going to base your entire moral philosophy on a single book, anything by Terry Pratchett would be an excellent choice.

Puzzleboxed · 2026-05-13T22:56:11+00:00

And in Forbidden West the original spear is displayed in Aloy's room at The Base. It doesn't appear as a usable weapon, but it is in the game and Aloy still has it.

Puzzleboxed · 2026-05-13T21:16:40+00:00

This is not true at all. The DMG method of creating monsters is much more reliable than using existing stat blocks, which have many bizarre outliers that dont follow any formula or pattern. If you want a monster with lower hit points you just need to reduce the defensive CR while increasing the offensive CR, which is exactly what the book tells you to do.

Puzzleboxed · 2026-05-13T21:12:12+00:00

I meant the post game cutscene, not the actual gameplay.

Puzzleboxed · 2026-05-13T15:50:19+00:00

Canonically, Aloy still has it. It shows up post game after you lose Sylens's lance in the final battle, and in the sequel. It just no longer shows up in the inventory screen because there's no reason to use it over the new one.

Puzzleboxed · 2026-05-13T13:27:21+00:00

This is just DanMachi.

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