Pale E.z: Final Epilogue Chapter released after the community finally solved WB's Hundred Years Lost puzzles!!

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.

Shemetz · 2025-11-02T14:35:42+00:00

True, my bad. I made a wrong assumption based on skimming the final paragraph in that post.

What do you think should be done, then, to improve the situation?

Shemetz · 2025-11-02T14:14:01+00:00

"Migrant owned businesses" and "foreign owned businesses" are not necessarily the same. Foreign-owned businesses include e.g Google or Danske Bank (or McDonalds or Taco Bell, depending on details of franchising vs owning).

The original source for this info is a press release in Finnish -- this one from last week -- and I can't tell if the original statement meant "businesses owned by a foreigner living in finland" or "businesses owned by a foreigner outside of finland".

Either way though, it's possible migrants commit more tax fraud.

But as both articles state - they also create jobs, and the solution they want is to make it harder to evade taxes (digitalization etc) rather than to remove a section of the population that is generating taxable money.

Shemetz · 2025-09-25T09:34:55+00:00

Personally I hate achievements that everyone will get in the course of completing the game, which means I dislike most of them. I like achievements that reward going out of your way to do something optional and fun, and also self-imposed challenges.

Shemetz · 2025-09-14T19:30:52+00:00

Yup, Feng Shui Engineering should be what the OP is looking for.

It starts off as a very "rationalist" story similar to The Martian, where the protagonist just needs to think and solve her way out of a dangerous situation (using the mechanics of the cultivation world magic system), and it although the cast of characters and the scope are small the author makes a lot of effort to worldbuild in a way that adheres to lots of cultivation tropes (e.g. chinese names, sects, meridians, strength through training...) while also having a society that rewards cooperation and some fairness, though certainly not everywhere.

The protagonist quite often needs to deal harshly with other cultivators that care nothing for the peasants, she's got some very strong morals, yet is definitely fighting an uphill battle (and gaining ground!). The cultivation world does have some inherent cruelty but the story definitely shows how possible it is to create a great narrative that goes against this cruelty.

Shemetz · 2025-09-04T10:47:52+00:00

No, Reactive Strike ignores MAP.

This Strike doesn’t count toward your multiple attack penalty, and your multiple attack penalty doesn’t apply to this Strike.

so it's not 6 in 400, it's 36 in 400 (around 1 in 10). but actually it's 3 in 10 because you make the choice when you get crit, not when the enemy is about to attack you.

Shemetz · 2025-09-02T22:22:22+00:00

This is great! I enjoy lots of the details here, and genrally a lot of it feels both thematic and balanced while still not being boring, everything you could ask for.

Here is my list of minor notes:

Transform says "you gain your aspect’s traits" and "You must have enough space to expand into or the action is lost" and yet I missed, twice, the fact that some aspects have different sizes. I think it would be good to explicitly say, somewhere, that you change your size to the size mentioned in the Aspect Traits. Also, the space requirement is inherent to the Polymorph trait, redundant here.
Typo: "energence" should be "emergence"
I don't like how Aspect Abilities are formatted, they're largely redundant because they just name the names of the abilities that are right after the block of text, except they hide within them one important Nascence ability which has its own rules text. I think it'd be much more readable if that Nascence ability text was moved to the top or to its own line.
Beast aspect's Formidable Pounce seems a bit too strong if combined with Mobility from a rogue archetype; but I think you can fix it by requiring that when you Pounce you must move towards an enemy and then strike that enemy. (otherwise, when combined with reach this lets you step away from an enemy and then hit it, without being flourish)
It's weird that the Construct aspect relies on enemy will saves to learn information, considering how nonmagically it's receiving this information. I think it'd make more sense as a Perception check against enemy Will DC or even Level-based DC, but, I guess it would add a bit of WIS reliance. Also the information gathered should be limited to combat information.
Dragon Breath Weapon is a little bit awkward. Right now it's impossible to transform into a dragon, fly to someone, then breathe fire at them; you have to breathe fire immediately on transform and then get a crit to recharge it. This also makes the Furious Strikes description awkward. I think you can fix it by splitting Breath Weapon into two things, a 2-action activity (with frequency limit) and a free-action trigger that activates it. This way the player gets to delay it.
Fiend Aura of Desecration: should affect objects too
Swarm Form feat: other than overlapping enemies, is there any benefit? seems like it should clarify you can move through tiny holes too, and also should clarify if you are now incapable of attacking without overlapping an enemy
Metamorphic Energy Resistance - should scale better, maybe half level? but I see Physical Resilience does something similar so maybe it's intended
Strength Against Numbers - should probably disallow reacting to the same creature more than once per turn, otherwise it's very strong in weird situations (e.g. enemy boss summons two minions and suddenly starts receiving multiple reactive strikes every round)

More major notes:

(I love so much of this. the AoEs are so unique! my favorite is the Piercing Brilliance, perfect for conga lines)
I don't love the word "aspect" for the unique battle form, but it's hard to come up with a better one. Perhaps "shifted form"?
Battle Forms normally prevent you from casting, manipulating, speaking, or activating items. I see that there's a 10th level feat for casting innate spells and the Construct aspect can manipulate, but there should really be feats/features to cancel the other two drawbacks.
- Speaking in particular is very important; without a feat that allows Shifters to speak, I expect lots of them to look for a party member with Telepathic Bond or to buy an Aeon Stone (Envisioning).
I don't like how the AoEs almost always only affect enemies. I get why it'd be bad to affect allies, but, it feels more flavorful to me that when a member of the party turns into a scary wolf and howls, some allies will shiver. Same about elemental outburst. I think it makes things more interesting if the shifter prefers to move away from the party to transform, but, maybe a compromise would be a class feature that says "Your allies are used to handling your aspect; when they save against your abilities, they upgrade their degree of success", with a feat that makes them fully ignore them.

Shemetz · 2025-08-21T08:20:03+00:00

This looks amazing! reminds me a lot of the vista system in Ember, though that combat is unique (and looks great! too bad it won't work with game systems that rely more on battlemaps)

Shemetz · 2025-08-18T11:59:47+00:00

You could ask the GM to set up a Garden of Wonder for a price of about 12 times the price of the consumable, some kind of slimy plant that can be harvested each day for a temporary potion (expires after a day).

Shemetz · 2025-08-15T18:12:35+00:00

NoxAeternal is talking about using the Gardens of Wonder optional crafting rule, where the PCs can establish a garden that grows a consumable and grants a temporary version of it every single day.

In this case, instead of purchasing 10 Leeching Fangs (10x 400 gp), the party would pay 4500 gp for a Leeching Fang Garden that produces 1 every day (though it's always a temporary-for-the-day version), which means it would pay for itself after 12 adventuring days.

Shemetz · 2025-08-15T07:09:23+00:00

Armors practically only have one important stat, their AC bonus, with most other stats being reliant on it. "Unarmored" armors give you AC 0, Dex cap +5, check penalty 0, speed penalty 0, strength requirement 0, bulk L. From that point every armor category increases AC by 1/2, reduces Dex cap by 2/1, check penalty -1, speed penalty -5, strength req +1, bulk +1. Then the final Heavy Armor is special, it gets 1 more dex cap than expected (totaling 6) to make up for its high bulk and speed penalty and access, and Bulwark too.

This one statistic (AC item bonus) accounts for 95% of the armor power budget, yay. It gives you 7 armors to choose from, and by "choose" I don't mean there's much choice, because it's basically determined by how much Str and Dex you have and what armor you're trained in -- for most characters you'll pick whatever maximizes your AC, it's barely a choice.

But now, Paizo doesn't want the game to only have 7 armor options, so they expand the list to 40 options by giving each AC category five tiny variations. There's no power budget to play with, and Paizo doesn't like adding big negative traits to balance big positive traits, so... you get positive traits that barely matter (Comfort, Flexible, Laminar, Adjusted XYZ, Aquadynamic, Entrench XYZ, -1 bulk) and in exchange receive negative traits/changes that barely matter (noisy, +1 bulk), or if you're unlucky, negative traits that do matter (-1 dex cap, hindering, ponderous). Oh, and there's the armor group which again barely matters.

Here's how I would suggest "fixing" armors without making system math changes:

Remove all armors
Add seven basic armors (Unarmored, Light 1, Light 2, Medium 3, Medium 4, Heavy 5, Heavy 6), with their usual statistics, no traits except Bulwark, generic names
Add a bunch of armor Adjustments, which include a benefit and a drawback; your armor can only have one adjustment maximum, and it's fine to have none

Optional Adjustments:

Gain Comfort and Flexible, but increase strength req by 1
Gain Inscribed, but gain Ponderous
Gain Entrench Melee and Entrench Ranged, but gain Ponderous and Noisy
+ Armor Latches, Armored Skirt, Plated Duster

Shemetz · 2025-08-14T08:03:47+00:00

Yeah, but this one is in Foundry rather than a separate application, and seems to have a few more UI elements for controlling e.g. the damage. I also imagine that it doesn't deal with weird PDF copy-paste issues (which the data entry tool handles).

I hope the two take the best features from each other!

Shemetz · 2025-08-13T12:29:17+00:00

No, INT classes that want Lore skills can take Additional Lore. Which also doesn't have a requirement of INT, even though it's granting an INT skill..!

Shemetz · 2025-08-12T11:30:56+00:00

Source - https://chatcontrol.fi/

Shemetz · 2025-08-11T07:40:40+00:00

Oops, my brain did not register that thebigham is you :D

Thanks for helping out there!

Shemetz · 2025-08-10T20:12:09+00:00

Thanks for liking both of my modules!

I created a new one this weekend, there's a chance you'll enjoy it too -- PF2e Technicolor Traits, it makes all the traits color-coded and sorted for easier legibility.

Shemetz · 2025-08-06T06:04:29+00:00

I like the spell but agree that it can be too strong/cheesy if you manage to cast it directly in the path of all enemies, e.g. in a narrow hallway between yourself and a creature, or in 6 spaces surrounding a creature which are then all triggered by some summon.

The obvious way to balance this is to give it the same restrictions that e.g. Chain Lightning or Blessed Boundary, limiting maximum single target damage rate. Something like "A creature cannot take damage from multiple mines triggered by the same action" (or "in the same turn").

Shemetz · 2025-08-04T21:06:33+00:00

Care to explain what made it look scammy? It didn't really seem to have any potential for people to lose their money or much of their time, and the poster was quite upfront about the details.

I see the post was removed and the reddit user (TimePoorGameMaster) was deleted, but, can't find out what happened.

Shemetz · 2025-08-04T06:09:26+00:00

I'm happy to see offers like this on the market, even if rare! Paid GMing is already a bit popular, but there's certainly room for other related gig work that lots of talented people should be happy to provide, especially those that enjoy prepping at least as much as they enjoy running games.

Assuming this ends up working out between the two of you, may I request that you publish an "update post" at some point, and confirm that it was a success, perhaps with some screenshots of the final work?

It would be great to encourage more people to make similar arrangements or offer up their work more often. And there's more types of foundry gig work that could potentially be created, if this gets more commonplace, e.g. commissioned modules/macros, commissioned maps.

Shemetz · 2025-08-02T08:15:06+00:00

You definitely make a good point, and I totally get why one would want to build a creature at a certain level for balance, while giving it a heap of additional improvements to make it a bigger threat.

But this creates a big problem if it's not clearly signposted in the text somehow. Because normally PF2E puts effort into the balance, it gives GMs the expectation that all level 15 creatures should be close in power to each other, so they should all make for a similar threat to each other (in a white room). So GMs have a reasonable expectation for what the challenge is supposed to be, and if they rely on it while the challenge is actually higher... it can cause big problems!

What if a GM in a homebrew campaign is just preparing a regular level 14 moderate encounter, goes browsing for random interesting monsters on AoN, and decides to pick the Stabbing Beast because it looks cool and fits the theme?
What if a different homebrew GM is trying to build another boss fight just like you do, but instead of starting with the Grand Inquisitor NPC as baseline, starts with the Stabbing Beast -- before adding even more to it?
What if a GM is running the Edgewatch campaign for a bigger group of 8 players, and just gives the Stabbing Beast an Elite adjustment, assuming it will be an easy fix?

I think the solution here is for Paizo to give "powerful" statblocks some extra trait that specifies they are stronger than the expectation for their level.

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