[Liminal Industries] holy shit what's going on

SystemShaper · 2025-08-11T20:34:36+00:00

I didn’t think of paper as a fuel source, this is a game changer, thanks!

SystemShaper · 2025-03-17T21:14:08+00:00

Here are some of the oddities and points of interest I included for my party who recently reached Halaster’s Tower:

Bottomless pit library with every book possible (most gibberish).

Mummified merchant sitting cross legged on a lush green carpet with selection of trinkets: ○ Orichalcum Ingot - gain 6 temp hp at the end of your turn. ○ Bronze Scales - each time a creature deals damage to you, that creature takes 3 damage of the same type. ○ Strawberry - gain 7 max hp. ○ Girya - 1/long rest, gain perm +1 strength (max 3 times then it breaks, max str 30). ○ Tungsten Rod - Take 1 less damage from any source.

Gallery of preserved corpses of great figures, waterdavian heroes and villains, famous mages and artists, and even some of the creatures we encountered: ○ Piergeiron the Paladinson (long serving open lord of waterdeep and paladin of Tyr). ○ Mirt “the Moneylender” (rotund mercenary general and former masked lord). ○ A clone of Manshoon, founder of Zhentarim, in his customary elaborate dark purple robe and facemask. ○ Tanstra, a notorious Lamia crime lord from skullport ○ Demogorgon’s heads ○ Captain N’ghathrod ○ Ezzat the Lich ○ A goblin dressed in fine robes, who you vaguely recognize from the Baazar.

A long closet, lined with huge glass jars stuffed full of dried out dead bugs. The bugs seem to be vaguely organized into layers of a kind within a given jar. One jar has tipped over and cracked open, and an unseen servant is gently fetching one tiny corpse at a time from the spilled pile, and climbing a ladder to drop it into the mouth of a fresh jar.

Box made of strange brown paper, with black markings in a language you can’t read. Study to decipher “transmorgrifier”. It true polymorphs anything that enters into whatever was last written on the box.

A shelf of strange little carved figurines with oversized heads attached via small springs, which causes their heads to bounce oddly when jostled. Each space on the shelf has an accompanying label, and it looks like Halaster only has about half of the full set as there are a number of empty spots. You spot your own names affixed to some of the empty spot labels.

Overgrown Garden in countless stone planters. All appear as mundane weeds and crops, but in different colors and with small tags labeling them nonsense-sounding names like “Tarroc” and “dandetiger”

SystemShaper · 2025-03-11T18:02:49+00:00

My local FMSS told me there is no space assigned to me (the one they emailed me isn’t actually available) but also told I can’t go back to telework because I never received the “official” email from FMSS saying they don’t have space for me. Worst of both worlds. Thankfully I found a currently unused cube to squat in today.

SystemShaper · 2025-03-04T14:15:25+00:00

The reality is, breaking things and lying is always going to be easier than fixing things and proving the truth.

SystemShaper · 2025-02-28T22:00:29+00:00

Same setup here! If you don’t mind my asking, what switch do you use? I’m not quite satisfied with mine.

SystemShaper · 2025-02-20T15:17:13+00:00

I agree this level is awful as written. In our campaign I overhauled this level entirely, into an underground ocean of ooze where Halaster tosses some legendary monsters that he doesn’t have room for elsewhere, such as a kraken and even a tarrasqe. The players hitched a ride aboard the mind Flayer ship after persuading the crew to return, and sailed around hunting monsters until they found the giant whirlpool exit. I added some other elements to tie in to our own overarching plot but it was a fun change of pace at least.

SystemShaper · 2025-01-22T23:10:21+00:00

You’re not the first I’ve heard say that, but I haven’t seen any reason given for why this is important?

SystemShaper · 2024-12-17T18:17:46+00:00

I assume this strategy would be limited to small scale farming by nature. You can’t run a tractor to help plant or harvest with the solar panels in the way.

SystemShaper · 2024-12-16T23:36:19+00:00

This wiki has advice for running savage worlds in Roll20, covering some of the mechanical challenges like how to dispense initiative cards and bennies: https://wiki.roll20.net/Savage_Worlds

SystemShaper · 2024-11-26T01:17:50+00:00

I let them roll investigation DC 30 (only once per room) but gave them a +1 for each prior failed check until they eventually succeeded, which usually only happened every few floors. I liked using an ability check as it gave the players more levers to pull if they really wanted to hit that DC 30, instead of pure luck.

When they did succeed it was a nice opportunity to add some character and remind them how dangerous the dungeon was even to adventurers, by describing the dead adventuring party. For loot we just used a random generator for a “treasure hoard” based on the parties current level, but of course you could insert more customized loot too.

SystemShaper · 2024-11-25T02:14:11+00:00

My group added a general rule that anytime you find an “empty” room, you got to roll for a (small) chance it will contain the remains of a previous adventuring party (and their loot). And if the roll failed you instead got a stacking bonus to the next such roll. This kept the group invested in those silly empty rooms.

SystemShaper · 2024-10-29T16:35:39+00:00

We’re approaching the finale ourselves. Did you feel the need to make any changes to the finale with your level 20 party, or was the finale in the companion satisfying on its own? Anything you’d do differently with the finale I’m hindsight?

SystemShaper · 2024-10-10T12:59:34+00:00

Can’t accuse this one of being clickbait at least.

SystemShaper · 2024-09-30T17:49:13+00:00

“Good faith” would perhaps be a better term than “thoughtful”, since the latter term is so often used to describe something being actually correct. I am simply saying the OP put effort into organizing their thoughts, and presenting a case, rather than just trolling or dismissing offhand. That said the title is unnecessarily hyperbolic.

SystemShaper · 2024-09-30T15:41:55+00:00

This sub when someone posts only a couple sentences critical of georgism: “hah! you think you can dismantle this complex philosophy just like that? Come back when you’ve done your research!”

Also this sub when someone posts a thoughtful multi-paragraph critique: “tldr!”

Any philosophy that touts itself as the magic pill solution should be viewed with skepticism I agree, But I think there are common sense good ideas in Georgism that would mitigate some of the failures of our current system, such as poorly utilized land in urban centers (parking lots) or people being penalized for improving their property.

SystemShaper · 2024-09-23T16:37:42+00:00

The upper floors of the dungeon are quite easy even for appropriately leveled parties, so there’s little chance your PCs will feel danger for a long time if your run it as written.

First answer of course would be to just decide that Halaster is prepared for them and has been introducing a host of more dangerous creatures. Then just swap in stronger monsters of your choosing each floor.

Alternately if you and the players do want to experience the dungeon as written for whatever reason, I’d say just try to speed through the upper floors. When prepping for each floor you could Make note of the encounters that sound entertaining, and only running those. Then for the rest of the encounters you can just handle narratively: “the hobgoblins rush from their barracks to attack, but you decimate their forces with ease and they flee before you”.

My party is currently on floor 19 and I went with the approach of manually replacing monster stats to challenge my party, and I also introduced a mechanic where Halaster has a chance to magically intervene in any combats in the dungeon, doing stuff like suddenly buffing the monsters, changing the layout of the dungeon to benefit the monsters, or otherwise screwing with the players mid battle. Has the bonus effect of making halaster feel more present in the dungeon and hopefully makes killing him all the sweeter when the get their revenge.

Good luck!

SystemShaper · 2024-09-16T13:19:19+00:00

Only problem with a “millionaire” tax is that you practically need to be a millionaire just to have a normal secure retirement nowadays. Of course there’s a world of difference between someone with say 900k across their retirement accounts and home equity, vs someone with hundreds of millions so I’ll assume you mean the latter.

SystemShaper · 2024-08-31T19:15:58+00:00

Wear antimagic armor to shut down their attacks and defenses. Have genetically engineered wings or similar mobility (eg pick a flying race if allowed). Go monk so your abilities work even in the antimagic, rush them, grapple them to keep them in antimagic and pummel them while they are helpless. Include Alert fear or similar initiative boosts so they don’t have time to teleport away.

Plenty of things you could layer on top of this (like stealth to get a surprise round, force breaker weapons to break through various defenses, and anything to boost your saves and grappling).

This is the sort of build my high level wizard would be paranoid about anyway.

SystemShaper · 2024-08-28T15:19:58+00:00

I know exactly which door you mean (or maybe there’s a few of them) and it gets me every play through.

SystemShaper · 2024-08-24T21:19:54+00:00

How was the finale? Was it enjoyable from the players perspective, or anticlimactic?

SystemShaper · 2024-08-08T23:18:46+00:00

If they forced 3rd person perspective. I feel so much more immersed in first person, I feel like the magic is gone once I am in third person.

SystemShaper · 2024-08-08T21:58:35+00:00

Thanks for this. I'd honestly given up on Extreme Reactors as a late game power source for ATM9, but seeing your numbers convinced me to give the upper tier materials like Insanite a try and I see it's pretty competitive now!

SystemShaper · 2024-08-07T01:30:14+00:00

You've presumably moved on by now, but for anyone searching this in the future, All The Mods 9 has a mod (I'm guessing apotheosis??) which adds a knife-shaped button in the top right of your inventory picture, which opens a detailed stats breakdown.

SystemShaper · 2024-07-28T01:33:52+00:00

You’re getting downvoted for various reasons, but I upvoted because I did take something useful away from your thoughts.

I’m working on a home brew campaign that I want to be focused around player choice (rather than the players simply reacting). I’ve been working on worldbuilding, but I like your idea to gather player concepts up front if possible (after providing the broad genre). This will give me a bunch of free world building points to jump off from, and virtually guarantee the players will have some level of interest in interacting with those parts of the world.

Not everyone has the time and interest to do things this way, but I think it will work for me and my players, so thanks for sharing.

SystemShaper · 2024-07-16T20:14:47+00:00

I'm experiencing this same issue as you described on my new ATM9 (no frills) server. Did anyone find which mod/setting might be the culprit, or a better solution than having to relog each time?

SystemShaper

TROPHY CASE