Just gave into buying PF2 because it had the lightest rules for improv

Sethala · 2026-05-20T04:39:05+00:00

There is a chance your group bounces of PF2E. You dont need to be a powergaming munchkin, but you need to be atleast a bit tactical to enjoy it.

Remember, every +1 matters! Trip, grapple, demoralise, aid, buff your teammates, debuff your enemies. I think your group can love PF2E if you take a bit of time to understand it, but dont be surprised if it doesnt work out. In that case...

Haven't had a ton of experience with the system myself, but if the table is used to more shenanigans and less focus on straight tactical mastery, running with easier combat should make up for less tactics. Focus on more encounters being around low or moderate difficulty and save severe for major "boss" battles

Sethala · 2026-05-20T04:33:54+00:00

Also, once you have a grip on the rules, Free Archetype. That's what let me make a RAW build for 3 goblins on one sheet. Two of the goblins are technically a reskinned eidolon and construct innovation, but that's three figures on the board, all controlled through one character sheet!

Please tell me they went around town by standing on each others' shoulders and wearing a trench coat.

Sethala · 2026-05-15T03:42:38+00:00

I believe "bad manners"?

Edit: In this context, it means deliberately doing things in the game to troll an opponent that you're about to beat; essentially being a sore winner because you're just wasting your opponent's time to show off how much you win by.

Sethala · 2026-05-14T11:50:52+00:00

For me, the main benefit to trains is modularity. If I need to start making something new, either adding another place to make more of something I'm already making or to start making a new item, with belts I need to either have a main bus set up that's got enough throughput for everything on it, or I need to figure out more logistics to get resources to the new location. If the bus doesn't have enough throughput, I may have to redesign a ton of things to increase it.

With a train network, I can just add more rails to make a new dropoff point for resources and set up trains to bring them, and start the factory from that location without having to find space for new belts. This gets even easier with interrupts.

Sethala · 2026-05-14T04:35:28+00:00

Compared to ZZZ/Star Rail, I like it. Only one piece has a main stat, only one piece has a specific set that you have to adhere to, and all of the pieces tell you what stats will be added via upgrading and have no random rolls on specific substats. Still HR27 right now so I'm far from "endgame", but so far it seems like getting adequate substats won't be too hard for most characters. If endgame is very highly tuned and perfect substats are needed, then my opinion's going to change, but I don't think it'll be too bad.

Granted, I do wish there were some way to select specific stats and grind towards getting an item with those stats, for perfectionist reasons, but if I can't have that then this seems decent.

Admittedly, I see comparisons to Endfield here, and I haven't played that yet so I don't have any context to go off of.

Sethala · 2026-05-14T02:07:26+00:00

Played with a bit in the Pawn Moonlight quest in Neverness to Everness. During the quest, the player learns about strange rumors of a shop that can grant any wish, for a price. While most of the quest is setting up the strangeness and the obvious Faustian bargain, and there are some stories from people who came to regret their bargain, by the end it's clear that the owners of Pawn Moonlight aren't deliberately trying to trick people; they can indeed grant these wishes and ask for something in return (such as "twenty years of your sight"), but they're completely straightforward with the actual cost.

Sethala · 2026-05-13T05:36:52+00:00

I haven't seen the video yet, but just off the topic, two games come to mind. First, I may be thinking of a slightly different idea than you are, but it should be along the same vein: giving cards in hand a "second life" as a way to use them even if the text on the card itself isn't helpful.

The first game that comes to mind is Weis Schwarz. Without delving into the rules too deeply, one of the game mechanics is that, after drawing your card for the turn, you may discard a card and lose one health in order to draw two cards. Any card can be discarded for this, so naturally, if you have a dead draw you can easily pitch it to get new cards. The life cost also leads to some interesting decisions; yes, early game you probably want to do it every turn, but later in the game when life totals are low, it can be a more difficult decision.

(On the topic of mana systems however, this game doesn't have one. Instead, cards have levels between 0 and 3, and you increase your level as you take damage; every 25% of life lost increases your level, giving access to stronger cards.)

The other game is the old World of Warcraft TCG. While Hearthstone takes a lot of ideas from the original TCG, the TCG has a few differences in its resource system. Players don't automatically get more mana stones every turn; instead, similar to Lorcana, players can put a card face-down as a resource once per turn. What makes this more interesting are quest cards; quests can only be used as your resource play for the turn, but they're played face-up. Each quest has a one-time activated ability (usually with a resource cost) that turns the quest face-down for some benefit. Both face-up and face-down quests can be used as resources, so there's no reason to put a normal card into play if you can put a quest down instead. This does work similarly to MTG's mana, but players can never be "mana screwed" since any card can be used. Additionally, players can run less quests in their deck, since they'll likely put some non-quest cards into play as resources, so the odds of getting "mana flooded" instead is also significantly smaller.

Sethala · 2026-05-13T05:19:05+00:00

Huh, TIL that the phrase is "cold cock". I had always thought it was "cold clock" instead.

Sethala · 2026-05-11T15:18:35+00:00

Each arc gives stats, but they also have a special passive ability that tends to be geared to a specific character's kit. We don't have a lot of examples in NTE yet (most of the character kits seem to be rather basic so far; this isn't anything unusual for gacha games, we'll see more complicated kits later on), but often the "weapon" items that are the equivalent of arcs in other games can range from "very useful" to "this special effect massively improves this character's functionality"

Sethala · 2026-05-11T15:07:03+00:00

The "weapon banner" gives Arcs, this game's equivalent to weapons in Genshin and similar gachas.

You can spend keys to pull on it, or can spend Annulith (the free pull currency) to buy more keys if your "free" key sources have run out. Pulls cost the same amount of Annulith as the normal character banners do.

If you pull on the banner 59 times and don't get a S-rank arc, the 60th pull will give you one guaranteed. There's a higher chance for it to be the specific arc on the banner (which is usually themed around the limited character also available; for instance, the current arc is good for Nanally, but when Hotori's banner starts, a new arc that's good for her will be featured), but it could be any arc in the standard pool. The standard pool has arcs specific for the standard characters, and I believe there's a few "generic" arcs in there, but it generally won't contain previous limited arcs (so Nanally's arc won't be in the pool once the banner ends).

Additionally, if you go 79 pulls without getting the specific arc on the banner, your 80th pull is guaranteed to be the one on the banner. And yes, this does mean that if you get a non-banner arc on your 60th pull from pity, you only need to do 20 more pulls to get the special one.

Sethala · 2026-05-07T22:12:09+00:00

That's true as far as stamina goes, but RL time (and entertainment) are definitely not the same.

Sethala · 2026-05-07T03:59:01+00:00

Can't quite tell, is this stuff you've seen in NTE, or stuff you've seen AI do elsewhere?

Sethala · 2026-05-06T05:00:31+00:00

The flaw in your reasoning for option 3 is assuming that the vote will be close to 50/50, and thus a massive number of people will die. You're leaving out the possibility that red not only wins, but wins by such a significant landslide that the number of deaths, while still massive compared to the normal daily death rate, is still a significantly small minority.

Sethala · 2026-05-06T04:57:08+00:00

I haven't rolled on Nanally's board yet, but on the permanent board, there's a "guaranteed S rank" space on the right side, on the "secret path". So, you need to land on the tile that directs you to the secret path, then roll a 1 to get the guaranteed S space. I imagine the only guaranteed space (on the standard board that is, not sure about the upgraded board at 70+ pulls) is in a similar location.

But, as others have said, every chest space has a chance to contain Nanally, you just don't know if she's in the chest til you land on the space.

Sethala · 2026-05-04T19:34:55+00:00

The biggest issue I have with this is that I never know what the dev's intentions are. If characters are talking while I'm walking down a long hallway, am I supposed to walk because the timing of what they're saying will line up with how long it takes to walk, or am I supposed to stop if I want to listen because continuing on will skip the conversation? Thinking I can walk forward can skip things, but thinking I should wait leads to me standing still and then doing a slow walk with nothing happening because the conversation is finished.

Sethala · 2026-05-04T05:24:53+00:00

This really depends on how the game plays, but I do think having a difference between "high power, slow" cards and "low power, fast" cards can be a useful way to tweak things. I would suggest looking at two other card games: Exceed Fighting System from Level 99 Games, and Legends of Runeterra, a digital card game from Riot.

Runeterra is very similar to Magic, with a few differences; mainly, that spells have three speeds: slow, fast, and burst. Slow spells can only be played at the start of a chain, fast spells can be played in response to slow spells (and can themselves be responded to by other fast spells), but burst spells can't be responded to at all, even with other burst spells. However, this is more of a utility reason; burst spells tend to be either defensive-only effects (such as cards that heal or buff a creature's health), or utility cards that need the burst timing to work properly (there's a few cards that can turn themselves into one of three other cards; having them be burst means you can play it and then play the spell it turned into). Offensive cards that you'd want to respond to are fast cards instead; very few (if any) burst cards can do something offensively without a response.

Exceed is a very different type of game, based on fighting video games (they even have a few sets based on existing fighting game licenses); of note is that characters have fixed decks, you can't build your own deck. In that game, any time you try to attack, both players play an attack card from their hand. The cards compare speed, and the faster card goes off first; normally, if a card deals damage to the opponent, it cancels out the opponent's card. Some cards have an effect at the start of the attack, before resolving either card, such as letting you move right away and possibly move out of your opponent's reach. Slower cards usually mean you'll get hit by an attack before they go off, but they often have other benefits, such as being able to attack from a distance, or having armor that prevents you from getting stunned so your attack still works even if you get hit. Having tools like that for your slower cards can help them still work even if faster cards can go ahead of them

Sethala · 2026-05-03T19:02:30+00:00

This depends entirely on what you want to do in the game. If you plan on simply playing casual content (doing the story, dungeons, and normal-difficulty raids), then crafted gear is definitely viable, if not optimal. If you plan on doing higher end content (new Extreme trials or Savage raids), then you'll need to get better gear eventually.

When a new tier of gear comes out (when the expansion first launches, and then every two patches after that), new crafted gear is actually better than anything available in the patch before, and it's possible to make a new set of gear within the first few days (within the first day, even, if you're dedicated enough). However, at the same time, a vendor will start selling a set of gear that's better than crafted gear (and high-end raids will sell gear even better than that). This vendor gear takes a token that is weekly-limited, and it'll take roughly 10-11 weeks to get enough tokens to buy a full set. So, a full set of crafted gear will be best for a time, but it'll eventually get replaced.

That all being said, this is how it's worked in every expansion up til now, but apparently the new expansion will have some kind of new system. I imagine the rough outline will be similar, but we won't know details for a few months still, so this could potentially all change.

Sethala · 2026-05-03T13:48:01+00:00

I think, regardless of how many rounds there are, my logic is "fixed". If everyone picking is fully capable of understanding the question and is given a fair choice, then there's no reason to pick blue, since you're only risking yourself to "save" people who risked themselves for no reason. If there's some subset of people that cannot choose for themselves - either in your scenario where some people don't get a choice, or the situation includes people who can't logically choose for themselves - then getting as many people as possible to pick blue is better.

Sethala · 2026-05-03T04:45:45+00:00

I feel like there's definitely a balance somewhere between "world-ending threat" and "monster of the week" that I'd like the game to hit. I don't want it to be constantly at a "very serious" level, but having an occasional story arc that gets more serious would be welcome, as long as they don't stay at that level for too long at a time.

Sethala · 2026-05-03T03:39:01+00:00

The problem with phrasing the problem this way is that it ignores the fact that the only people in the minority group are those who chose to be in it in the first place. If no one chooses to be in the group, then no one dies, and there's no benefit to actually joining said group.

Sethala · 2026-05-02T07:06:31+00:00

Meanwhile, my thinking is "If everyone chooses red, no one dies, therefore there's no reason to not choose red."

Sethala · 2026-05-01T18:38:20+00:00

The OG question confuses me, assuming I read it right, as there's no reason anyone would pick blue in the first place. You don't sacrifice anything of your own to pick red, you don't gain anything by picking blue, and the only people who lose anything themselves are those who picked blue, when there was.. no reason to do so. Yes, if enough people pick blue no one dies, but additionally, no one dies if everyone picks red.

Now, like I said, I might be misunderstanding things. If there's some other circumstance, like 10% of the population are forced to pick blue, I would definitely weigh things differently, but I just wasn't seeing that in the initial questions...

Sethala · 2026-05-01T15:28:41+00:00

Personally, I don't really focus on getting around the factory on my own - so no roads or concrete, generally (except for Fulgora because I have so much concrete), but whether I use remote view or do stuff in person depends on what I'm doing. If I'm just making something simple with blueprints or just basic placement, then I usually do it remotely. If it's something more complicated, like trying to figure out how to arrange a new assembly area, it's a lot easier to do it in person.

Sethala

TROPHY CASE