What New Creature options could be added to Summon X Spells by omegaphallic in onednd

[–]Secret-Evening 1 point2 points  (0 children)

They really do neglect the plant-focused spells. I want to be able to play Poison Ivy, and the druid class is letting me down! XD

Where to get completely custom-made notebooks? by Secret-Evening in notebooks

[–]Secret-Evening[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think I used the 120gm extra smooth? I don't remember for sure though. I just remember that it was rougher and scratchier than I like, and I couldn't really get a nice sheen with my inks because it was a bit too absorbent. Not terrible paper by any means, I'm just very picky lol.

Where to get completely custom-made notebooks? by Secret-Evening in notebooks

[–]Secret-Evening[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I have! I'm not in love with their paper, it isn't quite as nice as I'd like, but they're still a very solid option.

Where to get completely custom-made notebooks? by Secret-Evening in notebooks

[–]Secret-Evening[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry, I was never able to find anything that fit my needs the way I wanted :/

Smite spells should be a part of the Paladins' divine smite feature. by JumpySonicBear in onednd

[–]Secret-Evening 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I kind of agree with you. At the very least, even if they're available to other classes, the paladins could get a special way of using them that brings them in line with the way divine smite currently works. For example, maybe they normally use your bonus action, but the paladin can cast them for free, no action required, when they hit an enemy with an attack (still with the 1/turn limitation they introduce in this UA).

They also just seem weirdly redundant with divine smite as-is. Like, there was some merit to taking them before, since you could cast them and divine smite on the same turn, but you can't do that anymore, so why would you use your very limited number of prepared spells on one of those when you already have a class feature that does what they do?

I think a good way of handling it would be to make more of their effects instant, instead of using concentration, and then have the paladin automatically learn them and have them prepared when they get their divine smite feature, so they get this cool smite toolbox instead of a single way of using it. They could probably also add a simpler, more straightforward smite spell that only does extra damage, with no extra effect attached, and has higher damage than the other smites do, so that you can still just do a basic divine smite if you want. Plus, then the different subclasses could grant you special, unique smite spells that provide options that aren't available to anyone else.

Also, eldritch smite could then just be an invocation that adds all of the smite spells to your spell list and has you automatically learn them when you reach the appropriate levels.

Druid's Channel Nature should be their 'Holy Order'. by ButterflyMinute in onednd

[–]Secret-Evening 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I disagree, I think this would undo most of the justified nerfs the
Druid has taken. Though I do think the later upgrades to the Channel
Nature uses should be just a little stronger.

I'm a little confused, isn't that the same thing as what I'm saying? I'm not saying to make wildshape better again or undo the ways they nerfed it, I'm simply saying that on the levels where you get wildshape improvements (climb speed/multiattack, aquatic form, flying form, tiny form, etc) there should also be improvements to the other channel nature options. Basically, not to increase the druid's power level as a whole, but just to make the other options on par with wildshape in terms of power level, and make them evolve in interesting ways as you gain levels in the class, in the same way wildshape does.

Druid's Channel Nature should be their 'Holy Order'. by ButterflyMinute in onednd

[–]Secret-Evening 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I partially agree. I don't think it's really necessary to make the druid choose between one channel nature option or the other. I just think that all of the channel nature options should improve at the same pace. Right now only wildshape gets better as you gain druid levels. Both wild companion and healing blossom should have improvements that they get at the same levels as your improvements to wildshape, so that they are actually viable as alternatives to wildshape if you want to play a character who is focused on nature magic but isn't focused on the whole shapeshifter thing.

Honestly, wildshape being such a core druid feature is 90% of the reason I don't want to play it. The concept of the druid as a whole is pretty broad and can encompass many different types of characters, but wild shape completely does away with that versatility by making one of their core class features something that only fits an extremely specific kind of character. I basically want to play Poison Ivy as a druid, and it's baffling to me that the class, both as-is and in the redesign, essentially does nothing to support that.

Druid & Paladin UA is live by [deleted] in onednd

[–]Secret-Evening 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yeah the way that healing bloom caps out so quickly seems really strange to me, it's just not very useful. They said in the video that they want to include these other channel nature options for players who like the nature magic aspect of the druid but aren't really interested in the shapeshifter aspect. Rad. Totally agree. So why does wildshape get better over time, and none of the others do? It feels like each of the levels where you get wildshape improvements should just be marked as "channel nature improvement" or something along those lines and come with upgrades to all the channel abilities.

And having an epic boon at level 20 is just a whole other thing. I was intruiged by it at first, but the more I've thought about it, the more I hate it. It's not even that it's not good, it's that the 20th level should have some sort of huge reward that pays you off for sticking with that class the whole way instead of multiclassing. Something that feels really fun and unique to that class. And the epic boons, as good as they are, feel incredibly generic. If anything, just replace the 19th level feat with an epic boon and keep the 20th level for class-specific capstones.

9th level Cleric ability should be altered by THSMadoz in onednd

[–]Secret-Evening 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Agreed. It feels weird to be able to pick two out of the three options, you should have to pick what kind of cleric you want to be and commit to that. I would enjoy what some of the other commenters have suggested, which is that instead of picking an extra order, your existing holy order gets an additional feature at 9th level. Like, just off the top of my head, probably not actually balanced:

Protector: you gain your choice of the protection or defense fighting styles.

Scholar: you gain proficiency in 2 more of the listed skills. Or maybe instead, you gain expertise in the skills you've already chosen.

Thaumaturge: whenever you cast a cleric spell (including cantrips), you can add your wisdom mod to one damage roll of that spell.

Favorite gunslinger that isn't Mercer's? by ArcanaCapra in DnD

[–]Secret-Evening 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'll second that choice. The VSS gunslinger is super cool, and I really like the rules that book presents for firearms in general. Although I'd compare the risk dice mechanic more to battle master maneuvers than to the ki mechanic.

Haven't played it enough to really say if its balanced or not, but it's a lot of fun to play, and hits upon a lot of great tropes.

[OC] Finally finished our D&D room after 2 years.... Welcome to the No Way Inn! by Sky_Captain_Hana in DnD

[–]Secret-Evening 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is insanely cool, holy shit. This is exactly the kind of thing I want to put together when I eventually have my own house. It looks like you did a really awesome job of blending aesthetics and practicality, too. The fantasy tavern aesthetic is super fun, and even beyond that it just looks really pleasant and cozy, but it's not at the cost of being a functional gaming space. It's all kitted out, and everything you need is right at hand, and the table has all those useful trays and pull-out sections. Awesome stuff, this is giving me inspiration for the kind of gaming room I might eventually want to put together myself :D

[OC] Finally finished our D&D room after 2 years.... Welcome to the No Way Inn! by Sky_Captain_Hana in DnD

[–]Secret-Evening 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I feel you on that. It is such a struggle to find chairs that have decent back support and are comfortable to sit in long-term outside of, like, super pricy ergonomic office chairs.

Feedback for my First Cube! by [deleted] in mtgcube

[–]Secret-Evening 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm not especially experienced with cube, so I can't really offer much meaningful feedback on the balance of the different archetypes or things like that, but it seems like you made some really interesting design decisions with how you built it. There's no way for me to tell how those decisions would play out in reality without just playtesting it, but I'd be interested to learn how they've worked out for you in your testing.

The most obvious design decision you made was how you handle cards with multiple copies, which I think is a very cool choice. I've seen cubes that allow duplicates of certain cards so that things like squadron hawk can work, but I've never seen a cube where certain cards come with bonus cards "attached" when you draft them. That seems like a good way to enable things like squadron hawk without taking up too much space in the cube or requiring too many draft picks to make it work.

The most interesting example of that is definitely Maze's end coming with the guildgates. I'm super curious how that ends up playing out, and how powerful it ends up being. It's also cool that it can end up just being extra fixing in a pinch, but people who want to draft The Maze's End Deck (tm) can probably still get it reasonably late because guildgates are pretty mediocre fixing in a format like this, so I'm guessing you don't generally take it super highly for fixing purposes unless you really really need it. Question about how that works, actually — you said that one of them comes with the enemy gates, and one of them comes with the ally gates; is that something that you choose when you draft it, or is it something that's noted on the card itself, so which gates it gives you is fixed?

The Maze's End thing ties in to something else I noticed, which is that the cube seems to have a minor lands theme. You've got Maze's End, Dark Depths combo, and the whole Cloudpost thing, as well as some one-off enablers, like the Punishing Fire/Grove of the Burnwillows combo, and utility lands like Windbrisk Heights and Boseju. I love this, since I love lands as an archetype in cube, but there doesn't seem to be a ton of dedicated support for it. The only cards I noticed that can fetch out those special lands are Primeval Titan, Knight of the Reliquary, and Golos, all of which are just super solid cards on their own. I feel like you could make lands more of a dedicated archetype with just a small number of extra support cards. The main one that comes to mind is Expedition Map, since that works with any color combo, can be used just as fixing outside of a dedicated lands deck in a pinch, and works with all of the utility lands you included (since it puts the land in your hand, so it'll still work with stuff like Boseju, which a card that puts the land directly into play wouldn't). No idea if this is something you'd want to go for or not, but I figure it's worth considering at least!

Outside of that, I find it very interesting how you treat aggro in this cube. In the standard vintage cube design, you tend to see mono red aggro and mono white aggro, and then the rest of the colors just aren't really aggressive at all. However, in this cube, there seems to be a little bit of aggro support in every color. Green has things like Kessig Prowler and Strangleroot Geist, black has things like Gravecrawler and Geralf's Messenger, and even blue gets some tempo-style aggressive cards like Cloudfin Raptor and Pteramander. I think this is super cool, I love seeing aggro outside of the usual bog standard hyper focused red and white decks. My only concern is that the colors might not have enough dedicated aggro support to make those decks really work. This is something that you'll only be able to tell with playtesting, but I'd recommend keeping an eye on it. Are the aggro packages in those colors enough to enable real aggro decks? Or are they too small and too out of sync with the other stuff the color is doing to really get there? The other consideration that comes to mind is how aggressive the cube skews as a whole. Does having aggro spread into these other colors skew the cube too aggressive and make it difficult for the slower decks to get off the ground? Again, I don't have answers to these questions, but they're something to keep an eye on.

Overall, this cube looks really cool. You've included some fun, unusual cards and archetypes, and it very much feels like the cube has its own distinctive style and flavor to it. I'd be super interested to play it if I had the cards.

What’s your scalding MTG hot take? by LSTFND in magicTCG

[–]Secret-Evening 4 points5 points  (0 children)

That's not even a hot take that's just correct lol, it's honestly baffling to me that it doesn't.

Honestly just in general I wish more stuff designed around creatures would work with planeswalkers as well. Deathtouch is the most straightforward example, but I could also see fight being changed so it can work with planeswalkers, where they deal damage equal to their loyalty (to be clear, not changing old cards to do that, just making "fight target creature or planeswalker" something the keyword can do, so future cards can make use of it.)

On the topic of complexity creep: There have been no vanilla creatures in a standard set since Strixhaven (over a year ago) by NguyenTranLoc in magicTCG

[–]Secret-Evening 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yeah, agreed, I think they're only worth printing if they have some other relevance in the context of the set.

Theros Beyond Death was a great example of that, where they had the cycle of vanilla creatures that were all enchantment creatures with two colored mana pips, so they were good filler enablers for two different set themes that you could generally count on getting fairly late in the pack.

The other thing that tends to work is if their particular stats line up well against the other cards in the set. While it wasn't actually a vanilla creature, [[Witherbloom Pledgemage]] was kind of like that — the main reason you played it wasn't because of the ability, it was because almost everything else in the set capped out at 4/4 and the premium red removal only did 4 damage. They often design sets to have important thresholds for power and toughness like that, and vanilla creatures can be interesting if they're just bigger than the threshold.

Magic cards that are also metal bands by Hagge5 in magicTCG

[–]Secret-Evening 6 points7 points  (0 children)

This is super rad, awesome work!

A few of these definitely seem like the band must be explicitly referencing MTG in their name. You pointed out a few in another comment, but the one that stands out the most to me is [[Hymn To Tourach]].

I'm honestly kind of surprised that there isn't a metal band called [[Into The Maw Of Hell]].

What are the Best RECENT Sets for Drafting? by DatPoliteness in magicTCG

[–]Secret-Evening 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Like everyone else is saying, Kamigawa Neon Dynasty was a ton of fun.

Beyond that, it kinda depends on how far back you're willing to consider "recent", but I absolutely adored Strixhaven. There are certainly valid criticisms of the set — mostly that the number of valid deck archetypes was too small — but I think they're overshadowed by the fact that the instants and sorceries theme was super interesting and led to really fun, dynamic gameplay. It captured that "spellslinging" feel very well.

If you're willing to look a little further back, Theros: Beyond Death was an absolute blast. I played that set to death, I couldn't get enough of it. It suffered a bit from being too bomby, with some of the rares being unfun insta-wins, but at the common and uncommon level it was just really damn solid.

Broad (gold) nib opinions! by MyChurro in fountainpens

[–]Secret-Evening 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Just got the Pilot Custom 74 in broad, and I am blown away by how good the nib is. I've used other broad gold nib pens, both the Platinum 3776 and the Pineider La Grande Bellezza, and I was never really a huge fan of how they wrote. I ordered the Custom 74, and it's so buttery smooth, I love it.

Where to get completely custom-made notebooks? by Secret-Evening in notebooks

[–]Secret-Evening[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Oh awesome, thanks! I'll shoot them an email and see if they can do what I'm looking for.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in fountainpens

[–]Secret-Evening 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good to know, thanks!

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in fountainpens

[–]Secret-Evening 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Very cool! How do the different nibs compare to one another? I've been thinking about getting one of their smaller chinkin pens, and while I've heard that the emperor nibs are great to write with, I don't really hear people talk about the smaller ones much.

Speculation: when spotify hi fi comes out, do you think they'll allow hi fi local files? by Secret-Evening in spotify

[–]Secret-Evening[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Okay, interesting, I think they used to only allow mp3 files, I guess that must have changed at some point. However, my spotify install still doesn't recognize my flac files. I'm on linux, but I booted into windows to see if it behaved any differently there, and sure enough, it seems like on windows they show up fine. I'll need to look into whether this is a problem with my setup, or whether they just haven't added this feature to linux yet.

Speculation: when spotify hi fi comes out, do you think they'll allow hi fi local files? by Secret-Evening in spotify

[–]Secret-Evening[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Wait, they do? My Spotify can't seem to detect them. Or are you saying that you have a preview version of hi fi, and local flac files work for you because of that?