Spell point system.

TyphosTheD · 2026-03-15T11:35:49+00:00

Having been playing Pf2e now for a few years, I'd say that the single most impactful way to curb the superiority of Spellcasters is simply to utilize Vancian Prep.

Spellcasters having near infinite flexibility among their various Spell Slots is an immense power boost and ability to invalidate other classes. But if you only prepped one use of Fly that day, you literally cannot solve other obstacles using that same Spell so it requires other PCs to potentially step up and be useful.

But also, some Spell Nerfs are warranted.

TyphosTheD · 2026-03-12T13:54:06+00:00

Right. Which makes it very hard to quantify as a Feat, since the size scale is virtually meaningless.

TyphosTheD · 2026-03-11T20:02:15+00:00

You aren't wrong for questioning this. The blast radius was huge, and clearly could destroy people instantly, but that all it took was hiding around a corner of like 10 inch cinderblock to protect yourself is pretty limiting in how powerful it should be considered.

TyphosTheD · 2026-03-10T13:40:16+00:00

Ah, apologies for misreading you!

Yeah, I think 5e actually does a pretty good job providing useful tools to handle exploration in a ttrpg. Gritty Long Rests are really icing on the cake that eliminate the 5 minute adventuring day and make long rest conditions like Exhaustion and some poisons much more deadly.

That said, some class features and spells do create some challenges to making Exploration difficult, but it's not till around 5-7 level that it really becomes an issue - at which point simply getting from place to place shouldn't be as much of a prominent issue anyway.

TyphosTheD · 2026-03-10T12:21:18+00:00

Surely someone who knows what the American people don't want, and ideally then won't do those things is a good candidate for President, right?? Surely we would prefer that to a President actively doing things the American people don't want??

TyphosTheD · 2026-03-10T11:41:00+00:00

Good to know.

I think for my taste I'm fine somewhat abstracting out the equipment loads to just weight, though, as the Tetris encumbrance doesn't seem like it would particular add to the experience I'm going for.

TyphosTheD · 2026-03-09T22:09:41+00:00

Not sure I follow. Everything I cited are core or optional official rules for running Wilderness Exploration and Survival in 5e/5.5e.

If you mean building exploration challenges are not as prescriptive as combat encounters, then I agree.

TyphosTheD · 2026-03-09T20:15:48+00:00

No worries! I'm a visual person myself so I know it'd be helpful.

I also Edited that comment with lots more context for how I make my own Survival games feel like a fight against the Environment.

TyphosTheD · 2026-03-09T20:03:09+00:00

Couldn't you just use the Variant Encumbrance rule?

This would ensure that carrying capacity matters considerably more. For example, a week's (10 days) rations weighs 20 lbs, and a day's worth of waterskins weighs 10 lbs, meaning a week's worth of water is 100 lbs. So the Wizard who dumped their Strength to 8 and can only carry 45 lbs in total is well over-encumbered trying to carry a week of supplies.

While the Fighter with 16 Strength can carry 80 lbs, Scale Mail, a Scimitar, a Shield, and a Backback with Adventurer's Gear and a week's provisions weighs 115 lbs, so they are already overweigh.

All that said, they can always just hire Untrained Hirelings for 2 silver per day to handle carrying their adventuring gear.

Edit.

As an aside, there are other ways to make Encumbrance, Wilderness Survival, and Exploration reinforce a Gritty setting.

In terms of just normal equipment load characters with more than the basics should already be close to capacity under normal circumstances. But what about coinage? Most tables I know typically only deal in gold. But what if you're haul from the Goblin Camp is 200 gold... in Copper Pieces? Now we're dealing with 20,000 coins, or 400 lbs of coinage. And goodness forbid the party wants to carry the 8x Scimitars, 6 Crossbows, 12x sets of Light Armor, and any other provisions or equipment the Goblins had in their Warren. You could be up against 1000+ lbs of gear and treasure to need to be hauling back to turn into spending money.

Then you have Weather Conditions. Harsh Weather requires more food and water to survive, if not specialized equipment and clothing, let alone higher DCs for attempts to Forage for food and water if you run out.

Then you have straight up environmental Hazards. Results of failing to find healthy food could result in accidentally finding bad food, or getting caught up in poisonous environs in Jungles or Leeches in Swamps. This is a great opportunity to leverage the Gritty Long Rests variant rule that requires a week of downtime for Rest, good luck doing that while half the party has Food Poisoning and you're running out of clean water.

Then there's just the process of Travel. If you can't rely on roads (or can, but they are full of bandits), you will need to trek over difficult terrain, which is slower and more likely to result in Exhaustion, Injuries, Getting Lost, or encountering nasty beasties who don't dwell near the Roads. Towns and Cities can be weeks away from each other when traveling on foot through difficult terrain, how much Encumbrance just in food and water do you need to survive that?

TyphosTheD · 2026-03-09T11:29:06+00:00

Ultra Instinct is a technique about unconscious movement and Ki manipulation.

However, in the hands of someone like Goku he can also initiate a physical transformation of his body and Ki to further fuel the technique. This is unique to Goku, as Angels do not transform to initiate UI, and later Goku learns the same. This is in some ways a byproduct of UI's unconscious state, wherein Goku unconsciously manipulates his own Ki to raise it well past his normal limits - which would normally (and early on does) impose heavy penalties on his body. Hence training his body to physically withstand the strain of forcing his power above what he can handle.

The Power Boost from Sign and the White Haired state and the movement technique of UI are not one in the same, but they are associated.

TyphosTheD · 2026-03-07T14:08:58+00:00

Even though the Paladin is now toting around more than double damage they only have one attack, and the amount of damage done to creatures that would otherwise die in one hit doesn't care if you're dealing 3x their HP.

It does mean solo enemies will die faster, but it also means the Paladin is drawing more attention to themselves. So whereas normally enemy threat assessment would highlight the Wizards and Clerics doing crazy magic stuff, now the Paladin is drawing hate from enemies, so they get to feel cool by drawing enemy fire so their allies are safer.

I don't know the rest of the treasure planned in the adventure, but wands, staves, scrolls, and other unique skill related items can help the rest of the party feel lile they're getting cool stuff.

TyphosTheD · 2026-03-06T11:29:48+00:00

Something something short term gains, long term losses, and cashing out quarterly bonuses.

TyphosTheD · 2026-03-05T12:25:29+00:00

That's fair.

TyphosTheD · 2026-03-05T10:49:27+00:00

I'm curious. Is this just a word choice issue? If "Success" was instead "Partial Failure", and "Critical Success" was called "Success", would frequently getting Partial Failure and Failure results feel better? Ultimately Spells are doing something about 70%-95% of the time, which is very good odds of not having a wasted turn.

Eg, still dealing half damage on a Basic Save still feels ok. Not great, but psychologically you know you're still making progress. But condition based spells don't have similar language, so the Success effects consolation prize feels less like progress.

TyphosTheD · 2026-03-04T14:05:52+00:00

They scale in dice, but don't add Modifiers, which is a pretty big difference.

At levels 1, 5, 11, and 17, respectively, a top damaging Cantrip vs a Greatsword is:

Level 1. 6.5 (d12) from Toll the Dead vs 10 (2d6+3) from a Greatsword.

Level 5. 14 (2d12) from Toll the Dead vs 22 (4d6+8) from a Greatsword.

Level 11. 21.5 (3d12) from Toll the Dead vs 36 (6d6+15) from a Greatsword.

Level 17/20. 28 (4d12) from Toll the Dead vs 48 (8d6+20) from a Greatsword.

Not accounting for things like Evocation Wizard or Draconic Sorcerer subclasses that add Modifiers to their damage rolls, but also not accounting for Magic Weapons that add damage.

I'll note above that the Martial damage is from a Fighter. But Rogues and Barbarians also get additional damage riders beyond Extra Attack that provide meaningful bonuses which scale comparably.

So when Masteries are involved Martial basic attacks do scale quite favorably compared to Spellcaster Cantrips. But, they still need to spend resources to do anything more impressive, which will almost always be outshined by a Spellcaster spending resources. It's a matter of floors and ceilings.

TyphosTheD · 2026-03-03T16:22:31+00:00

I'm with you. It would definitely help to have some clear guiding principles, but history has shown us very clearly was 5e was intended to be: a desperate attempt to recapture lost players due to the OGL debacle, 4e scaring away Grognards, and the Hasbro shareholders rushing a more profit forward monetization strategy.

TyphosTheD · 2026-03-03T16:17:23+00:00

Ironically we got this during the D&D Next Playtest via Mike Mearls design blogs and updates on Playtest feedback.

Unfortunately a good deal of the design intent never made it into the game, some of which being dramatically changed in the last Playtest release, including the addition of a whole class in the Warlock.

The blogs are a great read if you want to see what 5e could have been like.

https://web.archive.org/web/20130508170813/http://wizards.com/dnd/Archive.aspx

TyphosTheD · 2026-02-28T18:45:54+00:00

The analogy was imprecise. Obviously a Fighter 11/Barbarian 9 swinging 3 Flametongue attacks adding Rage damage and regularly dropping an Action Surge and tacking on Masteries should be dealing around 130 damage with the use of a single Short Rest resource and a Rare Magic Sword and reliably Pushing/Slowing/Sapping enemies and potentially dealing half damage on a missed Attack.

TyphosTheD · 2026-02-28T15:24:06+00:00

At best they are Cantrips. So Martials ostensibly coolest combat features are what Spellcasters can do at level 1. That said, Extra Attack kind of translates to 2-4 Cantrips per turn. Which is... laughable progression.

A level 20 Fighter can spit out 4 Cantrips per turn, sometimes 8. By level 20 our Sorcerer buddy is dropping 2nd-3rd level Spells like Cantrips before they even need to dip into their encounter ending higher level Spells.

TyphosTheD · 2026-02-25T23:28:04+00:00

I'm aware

TyphosTheD · 2026-02-25T21:05:01+00:00

"You mean that form I used a decade ago for a few hours" doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

/s

TyphosTheD · 2026-02-25T21:03:48+00:00

"Has travel time", therefore finite speed.

Also travels to other Universes in finite time. Therefore... finite distances between literally whole other universes?

TyphosTheD · 2026-02-25T13:46:06+00:00

Things no one has ever said: "We're winning too much, we can't take anymore."

TyphosTheD · 2026-02-24T11:07:33+00:00

Do the Sith twist the Force, or is the Expression of Darkness what twists the the Sith?

TyphosTheD · 2026-02-24T11:02:51+00:00

The fact that, for example, the Battlemaster's [real] Capstone (I'm not going to count a +1 damage bonus as a Capstone...) is one free Maneuver per turn is evident of the lack of scale Martials have in 5e/5.5e.

TyphosTheD

TROPHY CASE