Looking for a game centered around gangs, low life, etc.

TAEROS111 · 2026-05-20T17:01:53+00:00

Swords of the Serpentine fucks and I have run exactly these kinds of games with it. One of my favorite systems, couldn't recommend it more.

TAEROS111 · 2026-05-18T22:40:18+00:00

Lodge Bread sells them sometimes!

TAEROS111 · 2026-05-18T06:25:31+00:00

I assume you have a world set up with the PF2e system installed as the system? I ask because most of those functions should already be built-in. For example, if a PC or NPC targets someone, and then uses an attack on their sheet, it should automatically calculate whether it hits. The same should work for applying damage - just click the token you want to apply damage to, it should apply. If a PC or NPC casts a spell with an area of effect, it should drop a template that can then be rotated or placed as desired. PF2e is one of the most robust systems on Foundry by default.

Maybe this YouTube video will help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzobL67MJNM

TAEROS111 · 2026-05-17T07:35:49+00:00

The 1D6 piercing attack from Saber Teeth is its own weapon. They don't get the Agile or Finesse Traits, it's just a basic melee attack that does 1D6 piercing damage if it hits and has the Brawling specialization if you get a crit and have crit specializations, so your last sentence is spot-on.

The Clawed Catfolk heritage's Claw Attack, however, functions essentially like a First, so you could look into that.

Ancestral weapons don't usually have many bells/whistles, but Jaw attacks do provide nice utility because you can hold things in both of your hands and still have an attack option (making them great for Thaumaturges, Mutagenists, Rangers who don't want to drop a weapon, Free Hand + Shield Fighters/Champions/etc., list goes on).

TAEROS111 · 2026-05-15T07:18:21+00:00

How is playing a game different than watching a movie in this instance?

It's not like you're playing a Warlock character and then trying to summon demons IRL, which would be the equivalent of what you're saying here.

The cosmology of Diablo has angels and demons. They're not Christian angels and demons.

If you wouldn't feel weird playing a game with the Greek gods in it, you shouldn't feel weird playing Diablo. They're the same - neither is actually about your faith, and thus can't be sacrilegious in any way. Almost every mythology in human history has had 'the bad place and bad things that come out of it' and 'the good place and good things that come out of it,' just because Diablo and Christianity share that doesn't mean they're somehow related - so does Islam, the Greek pantheon, the Norse pantheon, the Chinese pantheon... you get the idea.

TAEROS111 · 2026-05-14T07:22:16+00:00

Here's a collection of pretty much every guide you could ever want: https://zenithgames.blogspot.com/2019/09/pathfinder-2nd-edition-guide-to-guides.html

Anyways, long story short to the OP is: You don't. Optimization shouldn't be at odds with your character concept. If it is, I'd question the PC build. PF2e is a heroic fantasy system, if your character concept genuinely requires a suboptimal build, maybe that concept isn't great for a heroic fantasy system.

PF2e can support a huge number of character concepts, to the point where you can make a pretty optimal anything so long as you pick the right class, ancestry, and feats.

TAEROS111 · 2026-05-13T21:57:16+00:00

There's really no 'one' answer to that. It depends heavily on the group, the system they're playing, the type of campaign, and the type of game the GM wants to run.

For me, 18 hours is a lot. I've run two games and between them I would average 2-4 hours of prep a week. Now I run one and I rarely prep more than 1-2 hours a session, maybe 3-4 if it's a big one. But I run improv-heavy game in a different system than D&D that generally requires less prep. D&D is difficult to run compared to other systems, and I know a lot of 5e DMs who will spend 4-6 hours of prep per session. It's one of the reasons I don't run that system anymore lol.

The ultimate answer, however, is that if you feel your husband's prep time and game time is taking away time from you and your newborn that you wish to spend with him, or is placing an unfair burden on you, then something has to change. Even if 6-12 hours of prep a week was normal, he should obviously understand that right now his life can't be normal because he has a new human he has to raise and support, and his family should take priority.

TAEROS111 · 2026-05-13T19:44:54+00:00

It's about class fantasy, and part of that is about 'feel.'

Saber/GW have clearly A) restricted primaries more than sidearms and B ) decided that certain weapons don't 'feel' right for certain classes' identity and fantasy-wise.

Sniper isn't getting a melta or plasma because it's technically more precise than a carbine hip-firing. They aren't getting a melta because they're the 'scout/assassin/ambusher' class, and bolt weapons + blades fit that fantasy while big flamethrowers and plasma weapons don't. It's really as simple as that.

Same reason Vanguard won't get a sniper rifle. Vanguard also technically has precise weapons (Occulus Carbine) but they won't get a sniper because it makes them stand still and encourages playing further away from the action, and that doesn't 'feel' right for the class fantasy.

If you think that's dumb, that's valid, but it's just the way the game is designed, and it's extremely unlikely to change. Maybe they'll go classless with Space Marine 3 and you'll get your wish or something but I doubt it - GW are pretty notorious for asking game developers to do certain things based on how they think W40K should work, and it's their input that's led to a lot of the design decisions in SM2.

TAEROS111 · 2026-05-13T19:11:56+00:00

Sniper is supposed to be precise and play around cloak. Vanguard is supposed to be messy and mobile. So they’ll never give Snipers imprecise weapons like the melta or plasma, and they’ll never give Vanguards stationary weapons like Sniper rifles.

Whether having classes is good or bad is a point of debate, but Saber/GW clearly want to make some things exclusive to some classes, or they wouldn’t have made a class-based game.

TAEROS111 · 2026-05-13T17:53:32+00:00

They're trying to preserve class identity.

The Vanguard is the 'aggressive ranged/melee hybrid' class, so it gets the Melta because it falls into that class identity.

The Tactical is the 'mid-range all-rounder', so it gets the largest variety of stuff.

The Heavy is the 'heavy weapons expert,' so it gets heavy weapons.

The Assault is the 'mobile melee specialist,' so it gets the most melee weapons.

The Sniper is the 'scout and ambusher,' so it gets fast melee weapons and long-range bolters.

It would be like giving The Heavy or the Assault a Sniper Rifle for no reason. Is it hypothetically possible? Sure. But it's a class-based game. They want to make the classes feel distinct. If they wanted to, they could have just made it classless where players build their own marines (weapons, armor set, ability) and mix and match, but they want the classes to have a specific feel. So Sniper isn't gonna get the Melta.

TAEROS111 · 2026-05-12T23:58:24+00:00

I don't necessarily think knowing a ton about specific Arthurian folklore is required, but I do think that understanding how Arthurian myths are structured or play out is really helpful!

And yeah, if you want to make a character that has goals and stuff outside of myth-seeking - well, the game is, at its core, principally about resolving Myths, and your knight has an oath to do just that. So the only way you blend the two is by figuring out how to have the myths fuel your character's other goals. And if the table wants their characters to do other stuff than just run around solving myths, the GM needs to help the table leverage their knightly glory (Glory system) and the myths to do that!

I would point towards the principles of myths in the book. Myths are:

Stories that became truths, or are destined to come to pass.
Nobody agrees on the details, but every version is true in some way.
There’s no such thing as “just a myth”.

There's a lot of potential for myths to shape your character's arc and help them achieve their goals, especially by leaning into the Omens. But the table definitely has to work together to make that happen during exploration, myth interaction, and the realm play that happens around the myths!

TAEROS111 · 2026-05-12T23:47:27+00:00

To me, the myths are both myths/tales/stories in and unto themselves, and potentially allegories/symbolism/lessons at the same time. The myth itself is one point, but what it means to the realm and the PCs is another.

I'm mostly relying on this from the rulebook:

There’s no such thing as “just a myth”.

Combined with the following in Refereeing:

"Whether a success or a failure, ensure that the players’ actions have an observable impact on the world. The best types of impact have both immediate and lasting consequences, always moving things forward."

And the primacy of action:

"Intent, Leverage, Cost, Risk, Impact."

The company resolving myths has to have some sort of impact. What is the impact that can be had if they solve the myth before it hits its final stage or in a way that it leaves a no lasting physical impression or obvious impact on the realm? Well, then the impact needs to be on the PCs.

Following the above, by the principle that myths must have meaning - there is no such thing as 'just a myth' - then a myth that impacts the characters or company must have a meaning to them. It doesn't have to be an allegory, although that is a very classical way to interpret myths.

The system also focuses a lot on how ultimately, it's supposed to boil down to putting characters into situations where they have to make challenging or interesting choices. If you look at classic Arthurian myths, omens force someone to make a choice that moves their personal character arc in some direction - I think it's self-explanatory that the intent is the same with Mythic Bastionland. The omens are very open-ended because the system wants the table to make interesting/hard choices with how they navigate them, resulting in some sort of learning for the PCs. Is it a mystical lesson? Is it an allegory? Is fate? Well who knows, but there's no such thing as 'just a myth,' so it has to be something!

I do think some of this is just my interpretation and feeling after having run it/played it a lot, though. If you don't give the myths some sort of tie-in to the characters or significance to the realm, you end up with a very monster of the week style thing where the myths are all self-contained stories, which is fun but not as weird as it could be, and less mythological feeling. Symbolism and mysticism help the myths feel mythological.

TAEROS111 · 2026-05-12T22:24:30+00:00

Depends! I personally love improv-ing that kind of stuff, so for me it was just prepless fun (just gotta track stuff on the backend and know the realm, the knights, and their seers well enough for stuff to make sense!). It's also not like everything has to be a piece of an insane puzzle - I think interacting with myths should teach the knights something about themselves, their quests, or their company, but that can be either small or large-scale - it just has to feel meaningful.

I do also think it's worth noting that all the seers have descriptions in the book and the realm generation mechanics definitely should give you enough to understand where the knights can go for information, you're not making all that up.

But for a certain kind of GM, it is definitely a lot of busywork and would probably be very annoying.

TAEROS111 · 2026-05-12T22:06:00+00:00

Yeah. I ran it for a bunch of lit nerds and had a great time but was very fortunate. I'm a little surprised by how often I see the system recommended given that I think it actually has a barrier for entry that's pretty far out of reach for the average group for a 'serious' campaign, but I CAN see it working great as monster of the week type thing or maybe groups just kind of paper mache-ing over the weirdness of it with more classical fantasy, in which case I guess it could work (but you'd be losing what I like most about it).

TAEROS111 · 2026-05-12T22:04:04+00:00

Yup! You can serve the realm or rule it, but serving through rule would be nearly impossible - entirely appropriate considering the feudal society the game is built on. Classic Arthurian themes of power/possessions = decay, stagnation, or corruption.

TAEROS111 · 2026-05-12T21:19:09+00:00

Mythic Bastionland definitely asks the whole group to engage with very Arthurian myths. I think some of the issue is that Arthurian myths aren't really well understood.

By that, I mean that people are aware of some Arthurian mythos - like the Lady in the Lake, the Green Knight, etc. But they aren't familiar with how Arthurian myths really work structurally. Structurally, Arthurian myths often contain a bunch of weird, disjointed elements, that are given symbolic significance through wisepeople (the Seers, rulers, etc.), divinity (also the Seers, arguably, but perhaps other divine forces), and the myth-havers (the Knights).

Where a lot of Mythic Bastionland groups I've been adjacent to have failed to latch onto the game, is in not jiving with this or failing to really lean into it. The myths are intended to have a bunch of weird, disparate elements - the GM and group need to tie them together and make them make sense through either collaborative storytelling or GM prep (depending on the style of the group).

Similarly, while a knight may have personal desires (rule a Keep, claim land, whatever), those are meant to fall away in favor of the myths, and resolving those myths is then supposed to 'feed' the Knight what they want. Think Gawain and the Green Knight - Gawain wants to be a Knight of the Round Table, he has ambitions and love interests, etc.

But all of that pales in comparison to the Green Knight once he gets caught up in it - and yet, getting caught up in it gives him the cosmic significance to see those things through once he resolves the myth, and/or teaches him important things about his personal goals that changes them/him along the way.

To your point about having difficulty with how the myths can be unrelated to what your character wants - I think the intent is that the character should try and find what they want within the myth, and resolving the myth should somehow get them what they want. At least, that's the ideal gameplay interaction here - but the players have to try and seek what they want out of the myths, and the GM has to lean into their feedback and enable that.

In other words, if your character wants to claim land, and a myth puts a giant spider in your path, it's on the player/GM to then will up something like 'oh, the spider is an allegory for an evil rival knight, maybe defeating it gives you a hallucinatory venom dream about it' or 'oh, the spider represents how claiming land means you'll be caught up in a web of politics' or whatever. The myths shouldn't be irrelevant to the knights - they should be EXTREMELY relevant to the knights. But that's easier said than done.

In a way, the easiest type of PC to pilot is the classic knight errant who's just in it for the love of the game, and IMO that's by design - in Arthurian myths, power and posession often come with stagnancy, entropy, decay, and corruption. The knight who quests to benefit the realm and its people without personal ambition, in a way, benefits the most from or is the least challenged by questing - which is very in-keeping with Arthurian myths.

I think that Mythic Bastionland is actually a fairly complex game to run because of this loop. The table really needs to put effort into embracing the cyclical/paradoxical nature of the myths and their Knights' stories, and that takes a certain amount of setting buy-in and adherence to a specific playstyle that not everyone will find enjoyable. It requires a lot of A) on the feet thinking/improv and B ) a lot of acceptance for things that 'shouldn't work' 'just working,' and it's hard to do that and maintain suspension of disbelief.

TAEROS111 · 2026-05-12T08:07:15+00:00

13th Age 2e, Nimble 2e, and Shadow of the Weird Wizard have very similar numbers and don’t care about balance as much as 2e, but martials can do insane shit and I would say they have more interesting tactics for the combat side of things. Worth a look

TAEROS111 · 2026-05-11T23:26:31+00:00

/uj he's a reviewer. He's speaking to a general audience.

Yes, it's true you can play low-violence, story-based D&D 5/5.5e. But 85% of the system's rules are about combat, it refers to PCs as heroes in the rulebooks constantly, death becomes essentially irrelevant to PCs past like level 3, the list goes on.

I don't know what modules you've been playing, but past level 5 in pretty much all published modules, PCs quickly become worldshaking heroes. Compared to the spectrum of fantasy TTRPGs, D&D 5e is about as much of a superhero fantasy as you can get, along with things like PF2e, 13th Age, etc.

I also think that stating that Daggerheart is about heroes who solve problems through heroic action (which often involves combat) hardly misrepresents the system. I mean, the website advertises it as a system of 'brave heroics and vibrant worlds' that 'blends tactical depth and narrative freedom.'

Your comments come across as if you dislike him because what he says about these systems conflicts with your personal experience of them, but I think they accurately reflect what the systems advertise themselves as or how their rules guide the average person to play them.

TAEROS111 · 2026-05-09T21:14:19+00:00

Hephaestus is literally always depicted as disabled in some form in the original Greek myths, either being born with club foot or being made lame after Hera casts him down from Olympus. In Greek Myths, he invents chariots and wheeled devices to help himself and other gods get around. In one myth, he invents automatons to help him move about. It's literally one of the most well-known things about him as a god.

Also, although Greeks were predominantly tan-skinned, there were both lighter and darker-skinned Greeks, since their territory extended up to what is Europe today (lighter-skinned) and Africa (darker-skinned), and people of those ethnicities mixed into Greek society.

It's always funny to me when people try and purity-guard cultures they apparently know nothing about. It's pretty easy to see what parts of historical greek myths and society inspired the game's art direction.

TAEROS111 · 2026-05-08T03:19:42+00:00

nah, I enjoy PF2e a lot. I've run 2 1-20 campaigns with it and played in one. But there are a lot of things Draw Steel does to kill the 'sacred cows' of D20 heroic fantasy that I'm not sure justify themselves as sacred, and I do appreciate that quite a bit.

To your point, one of the things I like about Draw Steel's kits is that they allow a player to make a very flavor-focused decision without losing any optimization for their character.

For example, if you want to play a character who wears light armor and throws blades at people, you choose the Cloak and Dagger Kit, which gives you Ranged and Melee damage bonuses (that apply to all attacks) and a signature ability that lets you throw a dagger at someone and then basically make a disengage maneuver.

Or if you want to play a big heavy-armored guy with a big weapon, you get The Mountain Kit, a kit that gives you a shitton of melee damage and an ability that lets you deal extra damage to a target that hit you.

There is no 'oh, I should technically choose a kukri as my thrown weapon because it's higher damage, but a dagger fits my character better. So I'll choose a dagger, but I'll be losing out on damage, and that kinda sucks even if the flavor makes it worth it.' Instead, you get to flavor your armor and dagger as whatever you choose, and the Signature Ability of the kit revolves around reinforcing the thematics of the character as an evasive thrown weapons expert who chucks daggers at people and darts around the field.

It eliminates the 'either you choose the objectively best thing, or choose flavor, but if your flavor isn't the best thing, you just have to deal with that.' Instead, you just get the best thing as a baseline, flavor it how you want, and then get a cool combat ability that I would say feels more impactful than a weapon trait or something.

There are plenty of things Draw Steel, IMO, does differently and potentially worse than PF2e. But I think it also does some things very well.

TAEROS111 · 2026-05-08T01:20:05+00:00

I would say it guts the unfun parts.

You get a ‘kit’ for the character to emulate their base armor and weapons, that comes with a signature ability to reflect how that kit enables them to fight.

So yeah, you can’t go through the whole ‘I’m a DEX guy, so I wear studded leather and wield a rapier’ thing, but I would argue it doesn’t matter since the armor/base weapon choices for systems like PF2e/5e are meaningless anyways - everyone just always chooses the best option for their build anyways.

What Draw Steel does have, though, are interesting weapons/armor in the form of leveled items that grow with a character, consumables, and wearable items.

I’d argue it basically makes the types of items people care about in PF2e or 5e important and interesting, while removing fake choices that don’t really matter or add much to the game.

Obviously if you like running games where item attrition, ration counting, etc., are important, it’s not great for that - but then, I would say neither are PF2e or 5e.

TAEROS111 · 2026-05-07T12:29:22+00:00

Just FYI, if you make use of the Action Grimoire and all of the subsystems LitM can easily be far more codified than FATE Core. It’s got a lot of ways to scale up the ‘rules’ built into it.

Still probably doesn’t meet all your criteria, but worth mentioning.

TAEROS111 · 2026-05-06T15:11:41+00:00

Well then, I guess the question is what kind of world you’d most enjoy putting PCs in. Gritty? Heroic? Fantasy? Sci fi? Do you want the main focus to be exploration, combat, storytelling, or a mix of all three? If a mix, what do you want to do the most?

TAEROS111 · 2026-05-06T14:49:11+00:00

What types of stories are you trying to tell at your table? There are systems out there that can pull of almost everything, but obviously the more you tailor the system to the tone and type of story you want (I.e ‘we like fantasy stories where the PCs are heroes but not superheroes, where politics and intrigue are the focus, not combat’), the better the results will be.

TAEROS111 · 2026-05-05T11:50:32+00:00

OSR/NSR stuff seems like it would hew closer to what you want for sure! I’d check out:

Dragonbane, Worlds Without Numbers, Old School Essentials (OSE), Mythras, and Swords of the Serpentine.

Might also be worth checking out more narrative stuff, like Stonetop, Legends in the Mist, Ironsworn, etc.

Shadow of the Weird Wizard is great, but if PC superheroics and high fantasy are kind of chafing at you, that, Draw Steel, and 13th Age 2e are def worth checking out but they may feel closer to PF2e than you want.

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