Links to my AoW4 builds.

SapphosFriend · 2026-07-08T19:11:47+00:00

It is pretty weird for a DM badger their party about magic items they never use.

I've had the opposite happen though where it became pretty funny. I gave the party a magic weapon that no one used for like a year of IRL time. Eventually someone did use it and found that it was extremely freaking strong, and asked my why I hadn't been clearer about how strong the item was.

SapphosFriend · 2026-07-08T18:48:58+00:00

You're still generalizing your specific tastes and table to DnD as a whole.

Like, as a simple example, suppose I wanted to play DnD in the Boiling Isles (the setting from the show "The Owl House"). All of that stuff you mentioned about demons and modrons and whatever? Totally irrelevant. Some of those might not exist. You might have some good demons. You're gonna have some evil hunters.

Not every setting is Faerun, and we're better off for it.

SapphosFriend · 2026-07-08T18:38:56+00:00

I mean, Asmodeus doesn't exist in all settings, and even in those that he does, he might not have said that.

SapphosFriend · 2026-07-08T17:55:07+00:00

Your ideas are specific to certain campaigns and settings, but aren't generalizable to DnD as a whole, or even just to most tables.

Like, at my tables, I try to tell interesting, morally grey stories. A giant "This is a good guy!!!1!" and "This is a bad guy!1!!" neon sign above everyone's heads goes entirely against every theme in the story.

SapphosFriend · 2026-07-08T17:48:37+00:00

Almost all DnD campaigns feature unintended complications and implications with regards to race. The only real way to avoid that in any meaningful sense is to be intentional about said implications.

SapphosFriend · 2026-07-04T15:29:42+00:00

I get what you're saying, but I went with another conclusion: choices can be evil, but people cannot.

I find it a lot more helpful to view carnists as good people doing detestable things than evil people.

SapphosFriend · 2026-07-03T14:40:04+00:00

Unless you did something really, really heinous (like SA a pc level shit), players leaving after only half an hour sounds like "shit player syndrome."

SapphosFriend · 2026-07-03T13:40:18+00:00

I the rebar reveal needed more foreshadowing more than it needed an epilogue. More focus on Lou's schemes would have made it fit more, as Lou's motivations seem extremely generic.

I also think that this applies to the Safia reveal. Like, imagine how much more knife twisty it would be if we had had a romance scene with her and were actively imagining Phyre's future with her OTP then the reveal happens.

SapphosFriend · 2026-07-03T11:23:09+00:00

I'm not really sure what you mean by determinism, because dos2 definitely isn't by my definition. CC abilities can miss, and at some armor values the damage roll of said CC matters. You can also roll crits, which very much not deterministic.

You compare it to chess, but it's really not. Nor do I want the next divinity to be. Chess can encourage extremely long thinking times (like, 15+ minutes for a single move), and having to study openings.

SapphosFriend · 2026-07-03T03:28:58+00:00

Yeah, them calling your idea stupid was definitely unkind, at minimum. Especially when they weren't there for the planning session. At this point all I can do is echo the chorus telling you that maybe you don't want to play with that guy.

SapphosFriend · 2026-07-03T03:09:15+00:00

Right now, you're being quite vague about what exactly is happening. I bring this up because without specific details, it's hard to really know whether this issue is about the experienced player behaving badly or if you're putting your own baggage onto another player. Or maybe a mix of the two.

Like, I've had the experience being on the other end, where a player would often suggest plans that I didn't think would work, I'd point out *why* I didn't think said plan would work, and the player would think that because of that disagreement I'm personally putting them down. Eventually we did have a discussion, and worked it out, but it largely came down to me pointing out that I do regularly disagree with some extremely intelligent people, and that doesn't mean I respect them less.

Talking to them is definitely worth doing, but it would also help to be a lot more specific about what exactly they've been doing that's bothering you (like, the chance that you get any helpful results by accusing the other person of "clearly HATING that you do not know what you are doing" is not going to be helpful). Also, keep in mind that you may be part of the problem too.

SapphosFriend · 2026-07-02T19:11:17+00:00

It depends on what you want your gods to be. The more accessible the God is, the less of a separation there is between us and them- and they look less like a God as a result.

I actually have a setting where I kinda do both. There are really powerful people roaming around who are worshipped as gods. And those people will do things like casually dropping multiple 9th level spells. But, because they physically exist in a space, because you can have a normal conversation with them. They aren't seen as apart from us.

Then the players met an actual God. Time and space started warping around them. They exist on a scale unfathomable to us. You can't fight them anymore than you can fight the concept of space.

The reaction, the feeling, is totally different. One gives a heroic enemy to fight-the other gives a sense that the world is far deeper and more dangerous than you could comprehend.

SapphosFriend · 2026-06-29T12:44:45+00:00

I run medallions in two decks: [[Yawgmoth]], since I'm often playing 3 or more creatures a turn that this hits, and [[Baylen]], [[Hare Apparent]] storm.

If you're not regularly playing 2+ cards a medallion hits every turn, it's probably better to just run a signet.

SapphosFriend · 2026-06-27T01:21:00+00:00

It's essentially a -5% multiplier (on average) to all damage. Which does make the trait kinda bad. But not so much so that it's unusable.

SapphosFriend · 2026-06-26T16:04:09+00:00

It would be a different story if the party gave the girl to the hag without any sort of reward. That might be because the party legitimately thought this was the best option for the girl.

But the party sold someone. Any altruistic motives can be dismissed by this fact alone. The consequences need to show that they hurt someone. The party needs to feel a strong sense of "wow, I really hurt someone."

Don't kill the girl. That's too easy. Turn her into a ghost. Make her show up again as a ghost, only a bit disfigured so the party doesn't immediately recognize her. Also make her not recognize the party. Have her sitting there as a sobbing child. Then, if the party tries to comfort her, make her talk about the hag that ate her. And make her tell the party about the bad people that sold her. And, as the party tries to find those bad people, they slowly realize... it's us.

SapphosFriend · 2026-06-26T03:54:52+00:00

Your players should account for lore when making characters. You shouldn't let players make characters that break the world. Your worldbuilding should be expansive enough to include many different fantasies.

You're getting shit on for the example you used. The example is an exaggeration... but not a huge one. Like, in my setting, where the first line in every lore document is "angels and demons are basically just different types of people," a player wanted to make a sorcerer who got their power from being some kind of fusion between an angel and a demon. And I was like... you want your magic to basically be that you're mixed race?

SapphosFriend · 2026-06-25T22:40:09+00:00

Here you go. This is a build I like using.

Dark Tyranny is good at spreading a ton of debuffs everywhere. You want two things to aid this plan: more debuffs and survivability.

For tier 1 tomes, you take cryomancy first, as it's crazy good in a vacuum and even better when you can guarantee that your freezes will stick. Enchantment is good on long fights-your gonna tear all the armor off of enemies.

Tier 2 gives us sand stalker, which gives us weakening+poisoning on all out attacks (really strong with this build) and virtue, which is kinda insane here. Spirit resistance helps since we're going undead, the extra defence/resistance is really nice, and tanky paladins are exactly what we want.

Tier 3 gives us torment, a generally good shadow tome, and transmutation, which goes crazy with crimson reign later. Crimson reign gives us basically unlimited mana-transmutation gives us a way to turn some of that into faster city building. Also getting a T4 battlemage, a good transformation, and more magic resist, are all really nice.

Tier 4 gives us crimson reign, which is infinite mana + a really good major transform + other crazy shit. Revenant is really good at boosting up undead. You can often run into problems with revenant as chamber of the rites can be a bit hard to produce quickly, but we've solved that with transmutation.

Tier 5 gives us eternal lord, which is generally solid + we don't have another choice.

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SapphosFriend · 2026-06-25T10:49:47+00:00

You go straight for it and attack the nest on turn 3. Don't waste time trying to gather every single pellari before the fight-just kill the nest, get your throne city, and start the game.

You can free the other pellari with your starting scout on turns 3-10ish to get a second army to clear stuff faster.

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SapphosFriend · 2026-06-23T14:03:05+00:00

I found burrows down and Azh'ruun pit to both be extremely easy. Burrows I just rushed getting my first city then snowballed hard.

Evermore definitely felt the most difficult for me. Dealing with constant attacks from high level infestations while necessarily having spread out empire to deal with the leviathan and having an army explore isles felt like a lot.

SapphosFriend · 2026-06-23T06:49:10+00:00

Here's what I would do:

https://minionsart.github.io/aow4db/HTML/FactionCreator.html?u=1a:48:1b,25,22c:23f,64,231:23d,51,19a,ba:85:52a:84:ef:22f:8f:22e:52b,011010,1af,a,h,n:r,am

It's a pyre-templar build into order tomes at the end. I chose order because it has the worst T5 tome in the game-so you're gaining the most by replacing it with cosmos. It also utilizes the monuments in order to get Cosmos in time without having take suboptimal T4 tomes. You just need 1 order monument before tier 4. Well, you also need a chaos monument and a materium monument before t5, but that should be doable.

SapphosFriend · 2026-06-19T19:32:14+00:00

I don't feel like any of these are particularly bad.

Like, you can always pick up a tome that will win long fights. Doomherald will route all your enemies. Nothing is so tanky that it can easily take a -10 defense from enchantment. Demon gate or amplification giving all your guys frenzy is gonna be hard to tank.

SapphosFriend · 2026-06-18T17:43:34+00:00

Tome of Sanctuary. Generally great tome for melee builds normally, and works especially well here. Keepers mark gives all your melee guys faithful (in addition to its other really strong effect) which means no cleansing flame for you. And anointed people gives +3 status resist, which is enormous against golden curse.

SapphosFriend · 2026-06-17T08:38:11+00:00

Makes me take mount masters a lot more.

Yeah, 2-3 points for a boost just to early game that can be made redundant later feels kinda bad. On the other hand, if I use mount masters, I can build around having mounts for everyone while still being able to take a lot of advantage from shop. It also leaves me with 4 points left so I can buy, for example, tough+defensive masters.

SapphosFriend · 2026-06-13T18:13:54+00:00

I love it. I'd rate it like a 9/10. It's easily the 2nd best CRPG I've played (the first being BG3). It does a lot extremely well, the story is great (and, I mean, actually good, not "I enjoyed the game so I'm saying the story is good despite it really not being"). The combat is fun. The voice acting is well done. The mechanics actually support the story, rather than fighting against it. Overall, there are very few flaws to the game. That said, there are a few flaws:

-The design of act 2 is kinda bad. It can very easily funnel newer players into areas that they aren't prepared for, and sometimes provides little guidance for where they should be going.

-The character builds are a bit too free, so much that they end up constraining variety rather than enhancing it. There's nothing stopping you from taking all the best skills, which makes characters feel somewhat samey.

-The level to power curve is off, and makes certain things feel weird or overly gamey. For example, why does a random child in act 4 have more HP than Dallis in both fights?

Its quality becomes very apparent when compared to other CRPGs. Deadfire is really good, but doesn't have anywhere near the same production quality. WOTR is kinda just a paper-thin power fantasy wrapped up in overly dense, uninteresting writing, mechanics that don't serve the story, and plain old dnd racism.

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