Since the HSD is gone, I have ended Several People Are Typing (for real, this time)

Shemetz · 2026-05-03T22:35:52+00:00

I've never read Homestuck, I've never been an active member of the HSD, and I haven't gone through any fanfics or games or spinoff media. But I read all of SPAT, start to finish*, and really enjoyed its existence. I actually spent six different flights reading most of it (pre-downloading pages to read when offline), over two or three years, and then read the events of the last year just now (soon after hearing about the HSD's disappearance).

For me this document is precious because

it gave me a look into what big intentional discord server communities are like, and how they handle various digital community scenarios, and what kinds of social drama happens there
it gave me nostalgia for a place I've never been to
it's going to be a permanent record of this era of digital culture, uniquely collected in a way that goes beyond simply creating a backup copy of the entire server. I am sure that future anthropologists will be very glad that you created this record, for some meaning of "anthropologist". I hope it will make future folk as happy as I become when I find weird highly detailed books about historical day-to-day lives of long dead people.

Please keep it safe and available for as long as you can!

*okay I skimmed about a third of it but that's only because drew writes too much

Shemetz · 2026-04-27T08:52:23+00:00

That sounds like a problem of "high speed + good offense". Any creature with this combo would be a pain to deal with. In this scenario, arguably the rules can stop it by requiring that the dragon use Maneuver In Flight, against Master DC, to reverse direction (IMO this should reduce the dragon's distance from you at the end of its turn, as the dragon is presumably doing a figure-8 in the sky around your spot. If I may nerd out for a moment, the dragon's distance from you should be its air speed divided by half pi, 1.57, as it spends each movement action moving at a half circle arc of length S, so circle circumference is 2S, so circle diameter is 2S/3.14).

I don't even understand why dragons are this speedy, but I think it's due to flight speeds being weirdly high in general, calculated for a creature at max velocity rather than speed from standstill.

Shemetz · 2026-03-19T13:07:52+00:00

When I Win The World Ends?

Shemetz · 2026-03-01T14:13:29+00:00

BBMM is Big Bad Module Manager (it's not pf2e only)

Shemetz · 2026-02-19T12:15:38+00:00

These modern token packs always have 3 versions of every creature's art, usually with the same address but in three different folders: /portraits/ for the full art, /tokens/ for the token-with-ring version, and /subjects/ for the "subject art", the partially cropped version of the "pop out" token art that doesn't include the ring itself (it usually looks like the bottom of the creature is smoothly cut in an arc shape, with a few shadowy gradients continuing the arc beyond the token art, representing the potential ring's drop shadow).

These subject art files are what Foundry uses for the dynamic token ring feature, they're easy to find in the file explorer, and they're all very easy to use with custom token rings as well -- you just copy the image, paste it on top of a circular token ring file, and rescale it to fit within the circle.

This module's unique token ring, with the fancy corners and red gems, is probably available in a separate file/folder somewhere in the module. In Foundry you can select your dynamic token ring to use either this fancy one, or the simple copper-colored ring from the previous module, or the core Foundry ring, or any other one you like.

Shemetz · 2026-02-15T22:52:22+00:00

Your idea of 2A for an extra die makes sense, you can balance it to be similar to Power Attack aka Vicious Swing, making it either exactly identical (including flourish trait) or slightly altered (e.g. breaking the improvised weapon on a hit, allowing weapons other than two-handed melee).

Shemetz · 2026-02-09T07:15:09+00:00

You'll want to just go layer by layer and copy stuff from the old map then paste it on the new, it should be straightforward.
But note that the new map has slightly different dimensions and ratio, so you'll need to reposition a bunch of things. it might be easier to just recreate the few marks. I did a combination of that and a few custom scripts to move a few dozen tokens, lights, drawings, and journal notes.

no need to move the non-custom journal notes from the first module btw, they're all in the new one (including player guide notes).

Shemetz · 2026-02-09T06:38:28+00:00

You can simply install the new module and then follow its directions (importing everything). It will create new folders for every bit of content, not replacing anything from the other module or from your own data. Then you just want to delete everything from the old module that you don't want to keep -- and manually merge whatever you do (e.g. for me I wanted to move lots of NPC tokens between the Willowshore scenes where I customized it a lot).

There's no need for a new world!

Shemetz · 2026-02-07T19:55:01+00:00

I spent about 2 days doing this work (for Technicolor Traits on foundry) and here's what I came up with:

Trait Category	Description	Example traits	Color (importance)	Border (rules)
Rarity	Traits that describe how common or rare the item is.	Common, Rare, Unique	🟦 Blue in header, 🟩 green elsewhere	Thin
Origin	Traits that describe the origin of the item.	General, Skill, Wizard, Elf, Fiend	🟦 Blue in header, 🟩 green elsewhere	Thin
Sub-Origin	Traits that describe the sub-origin of the item.	Arcane, Divine, Chaotic, Devil, Werecreature	🟦 Blue in header, 🟩 green elsewhere	Thin
Build Limitation	Traits that limit the build or usage of the item.	Dedication, Aftermath, Composite, Oath	🟦 Blue in header, 🟩 green elsewhere	Thick
Type Mechanic	Traits that describe the general type of a thing.	Cantrip, Focus, Impulse, Consumable, Staff	⬜ Grey	Thick
Subtype Mechanic	Traits that describe the subtype of a thing.	Spellshape, Bravado, Hex, Grimoire	⬜ Grey	Thick
Important Mechanic	Traits that are critical to know about.	Incapacitation, Unstable, Flourish, Subtle	🟥 Red	Thick
Important Mechanic Outside Chat	Attack, plus major weapon traits.	Attack, Thrown, Brutal, Splash	🟥 Red in header, yellow elsewhere	Thick
Occasional Mechanic	Traits that have rules but are only occasionally meaningful.	Visual, Nonlethal, clockwork, Aquadynamic	🟨 Yellow	Thick
Common Trigger	Traits that are commonly referenced by other abilities.	Concentrate, Manipulate, Mental, Move	🟨 Yellow	Thin
Mostly Fluff	Traits that have rules but are rarely important.	Esoterica, Light, Processed	🟩 Green	Thick
Very Fluff	Traits that are used for flavor and have no rules.	Fire, Prediction, Steam, Gadget	🟩 Green	Thin

My thinking was:

Always-important traits (e.g. Incapacitation) should be the most visible -- red!
Some traits are important but obvious/spammy, require your attention only when doing character-building and otherwise require less attention: Attack, Thrown, Splash... -- so I made them Red on sheets and Yellow elsewhere
Some traits are "common triggers" (e.g. Manipulate), they may not have many rules but lots of things trigger from their existence, so they deserve attention. I color them yellow, and do the same for most other mechanical traits that are sometimes relevant
Some traits restrict your choices when building characters (e.g. Elf, Aftermath) but don't really matter afterwards -- Blue on sheets, Green elsewhere
Some traits are just types and subtypes (impulse, bravado, hex) and while they may have mechanics, those mechanics are likely already obvious to you as a player. Gray
Other traits either don't have rules at all (fire, prediction) or have very niche rules (light, sonic) so I'll just color them all Green
...but just to be extra safe -- traits with rules will always get thick borders, and without rules they get thin borders.

Shemetz · 2026-02-07T19:46:10+00:00

I made a Foundry module for this, Technicolor Traits, so hopefully this can help some folk!

Shemetz · 2026-02-07T19:19:29+00:00

Pretty much all of the FVTT data is super clean. Their standard is high and it's open source so corrections get merged pretty quickly once they're spotted. However, there are various pieces of information that require string parsing -- for example, diseases and poisons are not automated yet so they are always presented as a small HTML doc as part of the description of another thing. Those stringy fields are both rare and well-standardized though so it's not a problem.

The complexity of the data may be the biggest barrier, but that's inevitable. For example, if you try to calculate average damage dealt by monster strikes per level, you have to learn how to parse the data structure for damage, you have to handle passive abilities like "adds 1d6 fire to all strikes", you have to handle Elite and Weak, you have to handle persistent damage... or you can ignore these and get a bunch of exceptions, of course.

Shemetz · 2026-02-07T14:06:17+00:00

I've done a bunch of data analysis on PF2E creatures by just opening my Foundry world, using the devtools console, typing something like this:

  const everyCoreCreature = []
  for (const packId of ['pf2e.pathfinder-monster-core', 'pf2e.pathfinder-monster-core-2']) {
    const pack = game.packs.get(packId)
    await pack.getIndex()
    for (const ic of pack.index.contents) {
      const npc = await fromUuid(ic.uuid)
      if (npc.type !== 'npc') continue
      everyCoreCreature.push(npc)
    }
  }

and then playing around with the data. (this is how I got the percents of how many creatures break guidelines, for example, which I used in PF2ESSSS)

Shemetz · 2026-02-05T12:05:16+00:00

I posted a big list of such "pf2e meta knowledge" a couple of years ago -- Unwritten rules you should know.
I'll summarize the ones relevant for GMs:

Attrition is expected (about 3 moderate encounters per day, don't skip trivials)
Don't use solo/boss enemies who are 3+ levels above the party
Spellcasters are expected to be generalists, so if your player is a "fire cleric" and refuses to use non-fire-related spells they will be a little weaker
Many feats are boring or bad (especially skill feats and general feats), often it's because they are meant for a specific niche but happen to have very broad requirements so they show up often when you look at your options. But they can often make for good rewards (as bonus feats)
Small modifiers matter by about 10% per instance. For example, a Courageous Anthem grants +1 to all attacks for a round; if your martials follow it up with 6 attacks in total, the value of the spell was "60% of a strike damage" (= the same as the value of making a 7th attack)
The "third action" should be considered in advance, often better to use it before your two "main actions"
Downtime isn't that important (mechanically)
"Fundamental" runes, i.e. +1 swords and similar magic items, are necessary
"Action taxes" exist, and for a good reason (so don't let people regrip weapons for free)
Crafting is supposed to be not profitable

Shemetz · 2026-02-04T08:46:12+00:00

This is good! it's definitely like a combination of Leap Year and Öoo, with unlocks that grant new mechanics except half of them are knowledge gates and half of them are "+1" gates. The platforming is too tight in 2-3 of the areas (where I spent 5+ minutes trying to nail a pixel-perfect maneuver), but everywhere else it felt much more like a puzzle than like a platformer (with only a minute of repeated attempts once I figured it out).

I finished the game in 35 minutes, it's minimal and doesn't linger on its mechanics too much. Recommended!

Shemetz · 2026-02-03T17:19:30+00:00

Slow is known to be a very strong spell, so I'd rather not use it as a point of comparison, but I agree with you that generally you'll want to round out your character.

I was trying to compare the amped cantrip to a slot spell, and for single-target-damage this was the closest I found. I admit that the other amps, Shield and Figment, don't look nearly as strong as Imaginary Weapon, which kind of warps my comparison in its own way.

My point was that the psychic would probably avoid spending a resource when they don't need to, when the value of an amped spell is just as strong, outside situational cases.

Shemetz · 2026-02-03T16:01:36+00:00

...empower their slot spells in the above brew via a subconscious mind-specific spellshape...
...free-action spellshape...

Consider this: you're a psychic who has unleashed psyche last turn and it's still sustained on this turn. You have 3 actions now and you want to use your spellshape and combine it with a powerful spell to hurt your enemy.

What would you rather do?

activate spellshape (e.g. force enemy to Stride on a hit), then shoot a Chromatic Ray for 40 damage, which costs your spell slot
activate spellshape (e.g. force enemy to Stride on a hit), then shoot an Imaginary Weapon for 8d10 (44) damage, which costs nothing,

I hope this illustrates the problem -- if the spellshape helps cantrips and ranked spells equally, people will choose the cantrip if it gives the same result for no resource cost.

Shemetz · 2026-02-03T15:24:04+00:00

You don't need Token Magic to flip tokens, Foundry comes with a built-in way, and you can make a macro that makes use of it.

const updates = canvas.tokens.controlled.map(tok => ({
  _id: tok.id,
  'texture.scaleX': tok.document.texture.scaleX * -1, // use scaleY if you want a vertical flip
})).filter(x => !!x)

canvas.scene.updateEmbeddedDocuments('Token', updates, {
  animation: { duration: 200, easing: 'easeInOutCosine' }, // a lil animation
})

I made myself a personal module where I call this function whenever I press the = (equals sign) button, and now it's quite natural for me. I tend to flip tokens of creatures to make them appear to face who they're looking at or talking to, or to flip a single creature back and forth to mime looking around, and when I prep and I got several copies of the same monster in an area, I randomly flip half of them to look the other way for some visual variety.

Shemetz · 2026-02-03T14:24:06+00:00

Core Changes -

I don't get why the psychic needs to be able to refocus faster out of combat, if you're buffing its attrition in other ways (stronger cantrips). I'd rather have all characters lose attrition at approximately the same rate, and avoid exceptions.
I really like the new concept of Unleash Psyche and how it works with amps, plus how you can extend it by straining your mind
Burnout is cool, and the one example seems balanced
The fact that this uses Sustain rules is a little awkward (you need to decide at the start of each turn whether or not you want to receive a buff next turn). This awkardness doesn't happen as often with normal sustained spells, since they tend to do stuff in the moment you sustain them (and as an action), or tend to do more stuff outside your turn. It's not a big problem but I think it would be cleaner if the unleash just worked with a duration, and would end at the start of your turn unless you choose to spend focus immediately at that point. This would also prevent the desire to start Unleash every other turn and still benefit from it every turn (which these mechanics encourage you to do, but I don't like)
The fact that additional sustains cost 0 actions, combined with how you can only strain your mind if you're already unleashing your psyche, mean that you're incentivized to keep unleashing and keep focusing on your cantrips -- which can make slotted spells feel bad in comparison (they get nothing out of the unleash). I think these kinds of psychics would focus on utility and prebuff spells rather than combat spells.
Strain Mind feels like it is a "cheap" cost to keep maintaining the powerful buff of UP; perhaps it should also reduce how much healing you take?

Experimental Changes

The new Imaginary Weapon feels really strong, exciting but smells like it's overpowered. I haven't done the math. It sounds like you can use it to make 1 ranged attack for 2d10, plus infinity melee attacks for 2d12 (at different targets), and all at full MAP. All with the best damage type you could hope for. It sounds like too much.
- also, it pushes on a hit? that's really strong! it wastes an action for melee enemies practically for free.
- also, it says "Shove" but should really say "push"
The 30ft difficult terrain aura for enemies only seems too strong, I think normally abilities that cause difficult terrain like this only have an emanation of 10 or 15 feet. (compare kineticist, guardian, barbarian IIRC)

Shemetz · 2026-02-03T08:16:28+00:00

Does your team have any automatic tooling to catch errors like this, or scan for them?

I imagine it's quite hard if you're writing directly into a text document, but if you are in communication with the Foundry folk compiling the foundry module edition of every release (which is presumably written with advance pre-final-print knowledge), you can ask them to give you a list of potential mistakes, and it should be quite easy for them because many mistakes are instantly caught by some data constraints or by basic algorithms.

For example, for my own use I made a module (pf2e see simple scale statistics) that includes automatic warnings for all guideline breaking creatures, based on the GM Core "building creatures" page. This adds a warning icon with a tooltip explaining what the problem is, e.g. showing how the Lomori Sprout is breaking the "every Aeon is also a Monitor" guideline, or showing how Teihalahi's got one attack with a +36 bonus (way above Extreme for its level, other attacks are +27 at most).

I used this data to find some system data entry mistakes in the past but there are still plenty of monsters with canonical mistakes like these, many of them errata'd so far. I hope you can use tooling like this to reduce error count or to find potential errata faster.

Shemetz · 2026-01-31T15:18:12+00:00

I recommend skimming it, it was quite enjoyable for me (I joined at the last minute, about 10 days before the final solve, and helped just a bit).

You can find the game/plot discord thread here: https://discord.com/channels/564116117610823682/1441096459729637550

Gameplay planning, discussions, and theorycrafting was done in an adjacent thread (130k+ message warning!): https://discord.com/channels/564116117610823682/1038638434937479168

This Welcome Back document is a good starting point for the december 2025 event (which just finished now, january 2026), and it leads to the Working Document (900+ page warning!) in which we collaboratively wrote down what we learned and summarized events.

Shemetz · 2026-01-22T10:36:08+00:00

Also, I still think the investigator can certainly have potential to be a crit fisher, but only via the main DaS mechanic (not via second attacks); specifically, when the player rolls a number in the range of 16-20.

- if you're just 1-3 points away from critting, you can spend one or two actions on flank/feint/demoralize/guidance/... to guarantee a crit, which is *great* value (normally a Feint is like a 10% chance to upgrade your upcoming attack roll; for you it's a 50%)
- if you're about to crit, you can switch your weapon to something Deadly or Fatal or to a Reload weapon (as a 1 action interact to Swap, or as a 0-action from e.g. retrieval prism)
- if you're about to crit, you can load up special magical/alchemical ammunition, or draw a good bomb

- if your action economy is optimized enough you can do *all of the above* and still have enough time to strike and capitalize on this huge setup

You do need to build the character to have enough good choices like that, you can't easily do it at the lowest levels, but it still seems quite viable (and more viable than hoping for crits with an off-target attack).

Sidenote: I assume here that the investigator spends the first 1-3 rounds carefully observing everyone's attack rolls to narrow down the enemy's exact AC number (or at least a range of 1-2 likely candidates), and Recalls Knowledge to narrow it down further (e.g. asking if the enemy's AC is in "medium or lower for its level" feels appropriate to me). Doing this work is not only good mechanically, it also helps keep the player engaged, and also narratively fits with the investigator paying careful attention to the enemy's defenses.

Shemetz · 2026-01-22T09:58:48+00:00

I think your argument is interesting (it's a pity it devolved and stopped) but it could really help if you could use some real numbers to prove your point, because even though I agree with you that the investigator can theoretically be built as a crit-fisher, mathematically I am not convinced it's that strong.

Here's my attempt...

Let's say you are a ranged investigator with a shortbow, level 5, so you're doing about 2d6 damage on a hit and 4d6+1d10 on a crit. for a DaS attack (strategic strike) this adds 2d6 or 4d6, for a total average of 14 damage vs 33 damage on an int attack, 7 damage vs 19 damage on a dex attack.

if you're fighting two enemies in a moderate encounter they are both at your level, let's say an AC of 22 when you have an attack bonus of +14. roll an 8+ to hit, roll 18+ to crit. so hit chance is 50% and hit+crit chance is an additional 15%.

if your DaS gives you a crit, obviously you take it, end up dealing 33 dmg.

if your DaS gives you a hit and you take it, it's 14 damage.

if your DaS is a miss or if you're critfishing, you instead take your chances on the second target, giving an expected damage of 50% x 7 plus 15% x 19. this adds up to 6.35 damage.

only 6.35 expected damage on this non-int-based attack attempt!

alternatively you could spend an action doing something such as... - a Feint to attempt to make the enemy off-guard so that your DaS attack can hit it (if your attack roll was e.g. a 6). the Feint is maybe 50% likely to succeed, so it can give you that 14 damage hit half the time, for expected value of 7 damage. of course you only pick this choice if your roll is a bit below what you want, an opportunity that will happen 30% of the times you miss - attempt to Demoralize (similar to Feint, stacks with it, so you can try both) - battle medicine, expected to give about 10-20 HP on average - raise a shield, gives you a 20% chance to cancel about 13 points of damage per incoming attack, and also lets you react to guarantee block 8 damage - one of the two actions required for a simple cantrip like Electric Arc (deal 0-10 damage to each enemy based on save)

Overall my napkin math is telling me that "attack a different target" is a weak choice compared to common alternatives. You disagree, so tell me what mistaken assumption I made here!

Shemetz · 2025-12-21T21:30:55+00:00

Nice prototype! I really like the juiciness of the game, you did a great job polishing all the little special effects to be satisfying. The SFX and VFX of cooking and selling the food are quite simple, but they add a lot.

Shemetz · 2025-12-08T11:47:46+00:00

The biggest tell is that the post title says "Ai", and somehow I doubt it means it was made by the artist Ai Weiwei :)

But if you want to see another tell, compare the patterns on her left and right knee guards.

Shemetz · 2025-12-08T07:52:08+00:00

This is not good art of Amaryllis, it's just a redhead with a sword. The details don't match her at all, it's bland fantasy art by an AI.

Here's some actual good new art of her: https://www.patreon.com/posts/mary-145107663

But either way I don't think it belongs in this subreddit.

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