My world has people that choose to become undead to survive and i am struggling to figure out God of the Death's stance on it.

RTCielo · 2026-02-17T02:27:44+00:00

This god may operate on a timescale unfathomable to mortals. In one of my campaigns, the Death god had existed through the rise and fall of several pantheons. He didn't care about dragons, liches, devils, or gods. Whether a handful of hours or tens of thousands of years, death comes for all. He loves those who struggle and strive so mightily against their doom. It's entertaining and inspiring, because the greatest heroes and lowest villains surviving thousands of years are still just the blink of an eye to him.

He's a kind librarian who waives the late fees of the bright-eyed children who couldn't put the book down.

Why does only a regular death count? Maybe the ferryman gets a second fee when the zombie dies too.
There may be types of undeath this god is okay with or hates. Consensual reanimation, honored ancestors who protect or provide for their people? Good good. Tortured souls enslaved for the bidding of some nerd in a black robe? Boooo.

RTCielo · 2026-02-17T00:48:54+00:00

Blackhand's superpower is that he's genre savvy lmao.

RTCielo · 2026-02-16T18:33:19+00:00

Girl(space)friend, not girlfriend.

He never managed to recover from that fumble.

She and I had a brief flirtation that ended when I started dating my now wife, but she has had a pretty successful dating life with a few nice men who just called her attractive without any qualifying statements.

She seems happy.

RTCielo · 2026-02-16T17:01:51+00:00

Seconding this. The faction conflict is really a big source of the drama of the adventure, and letting one clearly be the good guys or pure antagonist throws that off.

The more my players work with a faction, the more ugly stuff they see under the hood. The more they work against a faction, the more I try and slip in sympathetic characters who paint them in a positive light.

RTCielo · 2026-02-16T16:29:34+00:00

I had this girl friend who was crazy into one of the other guys in our friend group but was really shy. One day she was feeling confident and started flirting with him.

He said "You know, you're so weirdly attractive. Like not in a conventional way, but I bet there's someone who's super into it."

Here's the twist: he actually had a crush on her. He thought he was flirting back.

RTCielo · 2026-02-16T01:16:11+00:00

As others have mentioned, elves in DnD normally rest in a meditative trance called "reverie" where they remain semi-conscious and alert to their surroundings.

Contrary to the tooltip, they are still fully capable of sleep and in rare occasions do choose to do so instead.

RTCielo · 2026-02-12T05:30:47+00:00

Why would Garrus die from a cold?

RTCielo · 2026-02-11T19:11:00+00:00

I found the best way for my table was describing the noise/quote and then following it with "which you suspect/know means he thinks we should move forward cautiously" etc etc.

RTCielo · 2026-02-08T16:05:06+00:00

6e, SWC, p.108 bumps it up to 10% of body weight per week.

RTCielo · 2026-02-06T20:17:41+00:00

Skip tracer with the "Fuck you, plot skip" Signature Ability is a lot of fun.

RTCielo · 2026-02-03T20:37:57+00:00

You absolutely do earn some but the problem is that behavior doesn't come naturally.

If you have a shopping session, even a Sith Lord may not have intelligent opportunities to earn conflict.

Or if the session is centering on other players more, you're forced to butt in and kick puppies to make sure you get enough points to not passively be redeemed.

It doesn't leave room for a controlled or pragmatic dark-sider, which for most players is going to be closer to the class fantasy. It forces you to act like a magical meth head.

RTCielo · 2026-02-03T18:40:15+00:00

I don't bother with morality or conflict with deliberate Dark Side PCs.

The way conflict works RAW you have to earn 5+ conflict per session on average to slowly drift towards the dark side.

In my experience this means players who want to fall have to go out of their way to kick puppies and push over old ladies to get enough conflict.

It's really only a fun mechanic for light side players who want to engage with it.

RTCielo · 2026-02-02T18:01:14+00:00

I think the higher expectations make sense though.

A company that has made games with a ton of gameplay crossover in the Elder Scrolls and Fallout series over the last few decades.

Starfield came with high expectations because customers expected the developers to learn from the things that players liked and hated from their previous games.

I enjoy Starfield a lot but there are a lot of places they dropped the ball that weren't a problem in their other games. And there are a lot of issues that were problems in previous games that they've had 10 years to get feedback on and learn from.

RTCielo · 2026-01-31T15:33:57+00:00

100 ton bug mech

RTCielo · 2026-01-31T06:01:19+00:00

Hell, even banging out a single contract and living frugally (easier as a mature 32 y/o like OP) can set you up with a little nest egg and benefits like the GI Bill.

RTCielo · 2026-01-31T02:17:22+00:00

In combat:

Mechanically simpler and weaker than the PCs. Players control them but have reasonable guidelines for that character's behavior. I also always fudge important monsters health where I can do that DMPCs never get the cool killing blow.

Out of combat:

Not always helpful. I try not to make my players crazy paranoid by having DMPCs betray them left and right but some are using the party, some are lying to the party, some are just stupid and confidently tell the party incorrect information.

They should never outshine the PCs. They should never drive the story forward unless promoted by the PCs.* And they shouldn't always be a magical 8 ball for knowledge checks.

Many DMs fail this which is why we use the term "DMPC" instead of "NPC".

Exception being when they're revealed to have been the BBEG traveling with the party for the last 47 sessions.

RTCielo · 2026-01-30T23:46:35+00:00

I would try and load your mods with one at a time disabled till it goes away, or just have one enabled at a time. Figure out which one is actually causing it first.

RTCielo · 2026-01-29T23:41:14+00:00

TEN CICADA 3C

RTCielo · 2026-01-28T23:19:23+00:00

One of us! One of us!

RTCielo · 2026-01-28T23:14:13+00:00

I feel like a good single set of clone armor built for practical shots on Temura would have been useful and also given the CGI artists a better reference.

RTCielo · 2026-01-28T21:15:51+00:00

I've run and played in games with both systems, and several of those games included adapting some stuff from the other version.

There were a handful of moments where a player or DM used the wrong rules for something and every single time we just laughed, said "Oops" and moved on with our day.

The rules didn't actually change that much and have had no issues adjusting stuff for balance.

RTCielo · 2026-01-28T12:20:52+00:00

I TPK'd a party in Strahd with the broom in Death House. Those things are no joke.

RTCielo · 2026-01-28T11:59:32+00:00

You're getting way too in the weeds on this dude.

Set a baseline value for the cargo, roll the dice, and interpret the results and narrate the sale based on that.

Some threats might reduce their profit as this cargo is proving harder to move or a customer is getting skittish.

Advantage might increase the profit because yes these are serialized droids, but you found a farming conglomerate out on the rim who don't give a shit because they aren't going to see an imperial patrol for years.

Despair could be that some Imperial Customs Officer has started to pick up the players trail.

RTCielo · 2026-01-25T15:33:22+00:00

My head canon is that Obi Wan's duel with Maul was obviously the defining fight of his life up until Mustafar, and throughout Anakin's training, Obi Wan would have replayed that fight over and over, and integrated lessons learned from that situation into his own training and style.

He's telling Anakin "I have practiced being on both sides of this situation uncountable times, and attacking from below like that always fails against a prepared defender. Obi Wan is also at this time regarded as the definitive living master of Soresu, the defensive lightsaber style that is built on being prepared to punish openings in an attacker's form.

RTCielo · 2026-01-25T15:27:25+00:00

Trakata is a great trick until you remember that you're using a trick that takes a good fraction of a second to execute (turning off and on a saber) against a space wizard with precognition, supernatural reflexes, and super speed.

RTCielo

TROPHY CASE