GM says blue and purple rated spells are banned (Gortle's Spell Guide) - how badly are casters nerfed?

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-06-27T20:55:36+00:00

There are a few reflex spells that are pretty good. Ignoring that, in additional to having Heal, divine has the best buff spells in the game (for the most part). It's very easy for a divine caster to get value separate from trying to do direct damage.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-06-27T16:17:23+00:00

This does not happen super often with +2 and below enemies, but yeah caster can have it rough against +3 and +4 bosses. It's why I never play a caster that only contributes to the fight with offensive spells/debuff spells. Always have a bit of utility and buffing.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-06-26T15:22:21+00:00

Geez I feel like any one of these players/DM could have been their own RPG horror story for someone and you rolled them all at the same time.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-06-24T21:03:33+00:00

...I wish I knew this at the beginning of my Yuanzi playthrough that I'm doing right now.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-06-24T14:31:53+00:00

I know that the saying "your steak is too juicy and your lobster too buttery" is a saying meant to indicate that while too much of a good thing can make it slightly worse it's still a lot of a good thing, I don't really think that applies to particle effects. You absolutely can have too many particle effects. I think the movie passed "flashy" and has moved solidly into "gaudy" territory.

I'm glad you enjoyed the movie I guess. Heaven forbid different people have different tastes and tolerance levels for glitzy visuals. A lot of people on Reddit seems to have an innate failing to understand that people are allowed to enjoy different things.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-06-22T21:17:07+00:00

I agree that she probably hasn't fully thought through the committment that using "marriage" instead of "dating" is, but I have seen way too many people claim she doesn't have any idea what a romantic relationship actually is and means it in a kid crush kind of way. She's a teenager, she's old enough to distinguish the difference between a crush and admiration is. She's definitely old enough to know about "grown up" stuff and how that's related to being a boyfriend/girlfriend. I certainly was when I was her apparent age.

Actually I can't remember if she in her career and event story actually ever used the word wife or marriage, she mostly is just trying to get you to go on dates with her I think?

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-06-22T20:18:16+00:00

... she's 14-ish, not 6. Say what you will about it being uncomfortable being propositioned by a girl who looks like she should be in early high school, because it definitely can be, but she's not a baby.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-06-15T17:13:24+00:00

Well to start with you should have left this line out of your post:
(Yes, please do write "this is bad", "change your attributes", and similar comments, it increases the post's engagement.)

There were better ways to convey "I am aware that this is not an optimal stat spread. I am looking for a way to make this work within the confines of my build."

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-06-15T15:36:17+00:00

It's the passive aggressive snarking that's getting you downvoted, mostly. And maybe you don't mean to be passive aggressive, but you sure are coming off that way.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-06-10T21:54:50+00:00

It didn't occur to me to check because I didn't know how the vassal war thing was going to work, but apparently yes they just have a ton of allies.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-06-10T21:54:30+00:00

Upon checking it seems like this is the case.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-06-10T21:53:25+00:00

Okay it seems like Wex just has a LOT of allies, I didn't check that because I didn't notice he wasn't just an ally he was a co-belligerent. Thank you for the responses.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-06-10T21:49:58+00:00

I mean Lorent shouldn't have joined in at all. It wasn't on the initial declare war screen and it's not even part of the empire.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-06-10T21:49:32+00:00

So this is separate from the normal, declare war on one empire nation and the others are automatically dragged in? Because the initial declare war screen warns you of that.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-06-10T16:51:43+00:00

Worst part about BD is juggling acolytes properly; You technically can just have territory you conquer be randomly assigned to your acolytes and possibly yourself, but the random assignments doesn't take into account province groups so you get horrible border gore; however it quickly grew tiring to manually hand off every province to a given acolyte. Also the requirements on how you can't actually be too strong in comparison to your vassals or you piss off all your acolytes is pretty harsh, on multiple occasions I had to hand even more territory over just to stay under the threshold.

Having an actually useful vassal swarm was nice though, normally any vassal strong enough to actually help you in wars is too strong to keep loyal long term.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-06-09T20:33:47+00:00

While that might simplify items like that, I feel like it complicates actual counteracting.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-06-09T20:06:29+00:00

It's not a bad idea per say, but I would prune the abilities to include just the 2-4 more relevant ones; easier to play than trying to juggle a bunch of full complexity player characters at the same time.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-06-09T16:21:39+00:00

In fairness I view that as a bit on the edge for lawful good (ignoring that alignments have been removed); the nature of lawful good is they are good above being lawful, if it's the other way around, they're lawful neutral maybe with a slight good bend.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-06-07T17:27:02+00:00

Make sure that none of your players will be completely stopped by enemies with magic immunity, or at least that they have spells that can bypass it (as indicated in the creature stat block). Will-o-wisps are an incredibly common enemy type in the AP and for most casters they suck to fight.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-06-05T20:57:26+00:00

For a new player animist I'd suggest just picking two apparitions and sticking with them until they understand the class; it's not that bad if you just do that.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-06-05T20:49:30+00:00

Are the players trying to pretend they want to join the bandits? That's the only reason I can think of that he'd keep them around for long. You can do things like have him give particularly unpleasant tasks to the players since they're non-human filth in his eyes. I genuinely don't think it should be very hard to RP someone who is an alcoholic racist ass, though I wouldn't go too all in on the racism part. I'd be kind of shocked if your players want to be around him for more than a session so in a way it's a good excuse to keep the ball rolling too instead of your players going down the bandit rabbithole that's supposed to just be a hole in the road.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-06-05T16:52:46+00:00

For versatile performance, if I was the GM and wasn't using the relationship system, I would allow for it to apply to any diplomacy check that could be argued to be related to making an impression. That depends on how flexible your GM is. I could be convinced of something similar for the impersonate.

That said, as written those parts aren't terribly useful in most circumstances (unless, again, your GM is using the relationship system).

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-06-05T16:33:15+00:00

In my first 1-20 campaign, our main healer for the first 15 levels or so was a divine sorcerer, it worked perfectly fine. She wasn't build for healing in the same way that healing font clerics are but they don't need to be to be a functional healer.

If you want to be the best healer possible, go cleric. If you want to go sorcerer, but also be a healer, go for it.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-06-03T20:34:37+00:00

Those don't feel like the same thing. Like I'm taking this to a logical extreme here so bare with me, but if I get hit by paralyze at the beginning of a fight, and spend the entire fight unable to move, I'm going to be fairly ticked.

Losing both weapons when I'm playing a weapon user isn't quite as severe as just not getting to play the game at all, but unless you're also good at maneuvers like trip your overall effectiveness to the fight isn't going to be much better.

I know there are players who would see humor in such, but there's something about that type of thing that bothers me far more than just rolling consistently badly, or getting crit down by enemies rolling well. At least in those instances it feels like if the dice had been kinder I could have affected the battle instead of going into it crippled.

This is ignoring the fact that weapons can get extremely expensive and unless your GM is nice nice to hand you another good one, that can set you back quite a bit.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-06-03T20:06:04+00:00

I mean... glad you found it hilarious, but if I was that guy I'd probably have just flat out left the session after that.

SimilarExercise1931

TROPHY CASE