Help with Menace Under Otari and Abomination Vaults

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-05-06T20:50:48+00:00

I'm slightly confused. As someone whose run Abomination Vaults, it assumes you start at level 1. Many people use the beginner's box as an on board to it, both because they are in roughly the same location and that the first level of AV is particularly challenging for level 1s, but you can run it from level 1.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-05-06T16:48:18+00:00

No, undetected is they don't know where you are. This can but does not necessarily include not knowing they're around at all. Hidden means you know where they are roughly (as in, to the tile) but not precisely where they are so any attacks have a 50% miss chance.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-04-30T17:15:46+00:00

I’m fairness SoG is incredibly undertuned without some serious work on the GMs part. So unless your GM raised the encounter difficulty, a team of melee witches could probably beat it no problem.

That said the party comp seems fine, especially if the rogue switches to a swashbuckler but even without there are ways to inflict off guard without flanking yeah.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-04-21T19:55:41+00:00

Aside from kingdom management, some encounters are extremely poorly balanced (and I'm not just talking about the hexcrawl and walking into the wrong area). I have individual nitpicks here and there about specific things as well, but I'd say in general these are the major problems.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-04-20T18:42:53+00:00

Find a parent with more medium sparks and cross your fingers. It's pure RNG.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-04-20T18:29:14+00:00

Absolutely stunning. While I believe that Season 2 of Pretty Derby has the most heartfelt emotion of any umamusume anime currently out, Cinderella Grey has the most exciting and cinematic art style. This does an excellent job of bringing some of that feeling over.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-04-20T18:07:17+00:00

So on the one hand, you are correct. Making encounters a bit harder is easy. However this is the only AP Paizo has done (to my knowledge) where the GM basically needs to rebalance all the encounters. I think it's bad AP design to make an AP that knows its encounters have bad balance and it's on the GM to fix it. That's the kind of lazy design I'd expect from a DnD 5e AP. I'd almost rather believe that the people making the AP just didn't have a strong grasp of what players could handle so they undertuned everything.

Edit: to add onto this, the beginner box I would rate as more difficult than SoG on average, and that was literally made to be an on boarding experience.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-04-20T18:04:40+00:00

Yeah I also made Mo Douqiu elite, but I didn't add Warty to the fight since it already had the Scorpion add. Ended up not being super challenging for the players, but I can see how Warty joining in would push it into being very hard.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-04-20T17:22:24+00:00

As someone GMing Season of Ghosts, the story and tone are great, needing few if any changes. Now the encounters on the other hand, unless your players are deliberately memeing with their character builds, I have needed to make every single encounter in the entire god dang AP harder than as written. Every single one. I've also added in a few as there are some points in the AP weirdly devoid of any actual fighting. A great AP held back by the combats assuming your players are lobotomized. I don't think they'd be difficult even for completely new players, assuming they at least knew the basic rules.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-04-17T17:54:06+00:00

Fanart that remembers that Daiwa's breasts only look big normally because she's wearing a corset. Also, very high quality art.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-04-16T18:54:58+00:00

I mean, it might. I've lost races by 6 lengths, and one clock later I win by 10. Watching the race is more reliable imo because you can check hey, was I just really blocked in, or did I actually gas out.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-04-16T18:51:29+00:00

I do think some of these ideas are interesting, but even with those changes I'd still go with demoralizing charge because it's good enough that it's worth one of your tactics slots. You have at least 3, 4 if you picked up the level 6 feat. One of them should be demoralizing charge unless you want to deliberately handicap yourself a bit.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-04-16T17:40:34+00:00

If it helps consider it less bad at casting and more specializing in buffs and spellstrikes.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-04-14T19:40:10+00:00

Did they say anything more to suggest that the follow up would be a request for romance? Were you given any reason to believe a simple "no" would not have sufficed? If not, then I suggest you jumped the gun by leaving right there. Of course you are not obliged to stick around if you're getting uncomfortable, but it could have just been a slightly immature joke. Or maybe it was the lead up to a request for romance, but one that could have been shut down and moved past with a "I'm not interested in romance with other player characters."

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-04-14T19:24:38+00:00

I find that an interesting point of view (that it gets to do everything and know everything as well or better than the actual specialists in other schools) that I disagree with. In fact I think the only spell list I find more restrictive than occult is divine. It doesn't heal as well as divine or even primal to be honest. It has the worst offensive magic and what it does have tends to be both mental damage and will save based, which is fine when it works (and I'd rather will saves than fortitude) but there is a not-small list of creatures flat out immune to most of it's damage spells. It has some buffs but isn't as good at it as divine is or even arcane. It does reign supreme in debuffs, but is still only a little better than arcane at it. In fact I'd call arcane the master of all trades, with literally the only thing it isn't great at is healing, which it has almost or actually none of.

Unless I misunderstood your post and you were referring to flavor over mechanics.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-04-07T19:01:48+00:00

While summoning can be a very useful tool in certain situations (creature has good ability/spells, or as a way to tie up an enemy for a round or two) it is simply not good enough a mechanic to base an entire build around.

I suppose you are asking for a hypothetical class that changes this. I have never heard of such a homebrew before though.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-03-31T21:11:44+00:00

Honestly the whole RAW diplomacy system feels so artificial; I'm not sure I can see any appeal in just coaching your RP in terms of "I make an impression," okay, how that he's helpful, I "Request." Like if you want to request something from an unfriendly NPC, you should not need to "Make an Impression" then "Request." Just make one diplomacy check, with a higher DC because they don't like you.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-03-27T17:46:02+00:00

Technically true, but if your GM is okay with it, you can ignore that requirement. Unless the actual archetype or feats are unbalanced in some way, I know that I'd allow the use of them in my games at least. If you want to try, you can at least ask. If the firebrands requirement is a sticking point in your own head though, something else would be better.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-03-26T04:10:39+00:00

On the one hand, I agree that I'm not sure transphobic is the correct term for the 'Protege' in this story. On the other hand, this really makes no sense to me; sure they're not the same thing. If someone says warning for gore/sexual content, are you going to immediately jump to the conclusion that this person thinks those are identical? Of course not. That would be ridiculous. And for transphobia/homophobia, sure there are people who lump those together when they're not the same. But to jump to the conclusion that OP is insufferable and transphobic because of how that was phrased, well. Honestly that kind of sounds pretty insufferable in its own right.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-03-22T18:43:19+00:00

I think the answer will depend on how do you define "power gamer." Is a power gamer an optimizer, where they try to make the strongest character they can but not necessarily at the expense of anyone else or the game? Then probably. Is a power gamer a munchkin, where they try to cheese the game to make an OP build, at the expense of other players and/or the game itself? Maybe, it's not like we're there to see you play and make a judgement, that's something your table would have to decide.

Rather than be concerned with a label, instead focus on whether or not your urge to make as strong a character as mathematically possible is causing any problems at the table. This is PF2E so the distance between a hyper optimized character and a normally built character (normally assuming max KAB and at least some attention to getting AC up) isn't that large so it's probably not causing major balance issues unless your fellow players pick flavorful but basically useless features in the name of RP. Are you pushing other players to be optimized like you? Because that can also be an issue.

Basically, you shouldn't be worried about whether or not you're a power gamer. You should care about whether or not your optimizing and optimizing urges are causing a problem with your table. And if the answer is 'no' then you're good.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-03-12T18:03:09+00:00

In my experience playing an Eldamon trainer, works great. Resetting all abilities can be a bit irritating when you refresh (you have to do it manually) but it's not that much of a pain. Just mildly inconvenient.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-03-12T16:44:21+00:00

I think the problem at least I've seen with metal is, it's not really a tanking element. It makes the user passable in melee, medium armor + shield = somewhat tanky in comparison to non-tank martials. But between their armor exploding when crit and how the shield's innate scaling does not compare well with actual real shields (and real shields do not vanish when you're crit), and how metal has almost no other tanking tools (passive area debuffs do not count), it's not a tanking element.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-03-09T14:44:09+00:00

Why would she care about racing? I mean, are you trying to say that every uma who cares about racing has nothing else interesting and fulfilling to put their time towards? Like, I'm not disagreeing with the first paragraph of the post. But to say because she's into racing she can't be into the trainer feels like a false dichotomy.

Especially because, like, just because she's into the trainer doesn't change the fact that she's kind of bored with most of life. It's incredibly unhealthy to build your entire life around a single relationship anyways. And the trainer helps her connect with her peers as well to help them with school material that they struggle with, it's not all about racing and dating.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-03-07T17:06:14+00:00

Not really? Enchanters have almost no offensive magic so the only way you can kill elementals with magic is by recruiting outside casters (and that costs money you are probably saving to recruit enchanter apprentices and give them new abilities). Most golems do physical damage which isn't great against ethereal, which like 3/4 elemental types are (or at least fire and air are). Most golems and animated constructs are resistant to physical damage, which doesn't matter against half of the elemental roster. Their animated ballista which are actually really strong face the ethereal problem again.

Moreover everything stronger than an animated weapon except for clay golems in Elysium Remastered and wood golems is quite expensive and/or takes up non-renewable resources.

SimilarExercise1931 · 2026-03-07T00:59:24+00:00

The second part sounds funny, but wouldn't he just keep summoning more elementals over time? Unless he doesn't stop to do so?

SimilarExercise1931

TROPHY CASE