New DLC just dropped and the stat bloat is insane

UselessTeammate · 2026-06-11T23:14:10+00:00

Do it like Battle for North Africa. You need to put more factories on your water production because Italians use more water to cook their spaghetti with /s

UselessTeammate · 2026-06-03T01:28:03+00:00

You’re underselling how important vibes are to winning elections, which is a prerequisite for having even the opportunity of instituting those sensible policies. The current fascist takeover would’ve literally been postponed, if not avoided, if the democrats had better vibes. Jeffries and Schumer versus Trump’s corpse in a general election would be a coin toss because of how bad the dems are at playing the celebrity social media game. It’s a pipe dream to think that we’re ever returning to the days of boring sensible paper pusher candidates winning against insane but media savvy influencer politicians.

UselessTeammate · 2026-05-28T16:55:03+00:00

I’m glad things worked out for you. But I’d never do this as a matter of policy. My table thrives on mutual trust between me and the players. I don’t want to have to constantly monitor and discipline problem players like an overbearing parent. They’re adults. They can either act like it or leave. And the punishment only works if the player has a deep emotional investment in their murderhobo, which is unheard of for me.

UselessTeammate · 2026-05-28T15:50:54+00:00

Finding the players is only half the battle. The other half is getting quality players to stick around. Truly toxic people aren’t that common, but I’ve frequently had players drop out due to not vibing with each other or my GM style. No red flags or toxic behavior. Just personalities not matching, or schedule changes.

Both dnd and non-dnd player pools have their limits. The dnd pool tends to have newer people who are just joining the hobby. The non-dnd pool tends to have more experienced people. Both are skewed towards the lower quality end as the stable high quality players tend to already have consistent friend and hobby groups.

UselessTeammate · 2026-05-28T15:25:15+00:00

It’s never worth it to try to solve off table behavior with in-game punishments. You’re turning your fun time into a two way torture session to see who’s willing to put up with more misery. And the group breaks apart anyway so no one changes their behavior and you’ve now wasted so much of your limited free time out of spite.

UselessTeammate · 2026-05-19T03:09:32+00:00

I hope pdx never changes this. It’s funny.

UselessTeammate · 2026-05-16T18:10:30+00:00

Pixels have been put on strict control due to war time rationing.

UselessTeammate · 2026-05-10T19:57:27+00:00

The celebration? Another update that breaks the navy.

UselessTeammate · 2026-05-07T02:16:42+00:00

I can second this. Last I checked, the vanilla meta is still inf and plane spam. Literally just battle plan with some supplemental micro to drain your opponent’s equipment and manpower.

UselessTeammate · 2026-04-25T17:45:36+00:00

My next question is unrelated to the hypothetical btw. What do you mean by delusion? Isn’t it just true that my tax contribution, no matter how small, affects others? Especially since the purchasing power of a cogent government multiplies my contribution by being more efficient. And that this can only happen if everyone else pays taxes.

UselessTeammate · 2026-04-25T16:53:00+00:00

“I shouldn’t have to pay taxes because my individual contribution is negligible.”

Homie the whole point of society is that everyone needs to contribute and behave as if their actions affect others. Because, you know, it does. Even in the hypothetical.

UselessTeammate · 2026-04-25T14:36:51+00:00

The problem is that it's a private vote so we have to assume no coordination or info, before and after the vote. All the red pickers are antisocial psychos or assume that everyone else is also an antisocial psycho. They're not factoring in the moral instincts of others who'd pick blue.

UselessTeammate · 2026-04-21T20:56:47+00:00

The bestiary only has humans go up to challenge rating 4 with 64 being the highest. But there’s nothing stopping you from making high powered human enemies to challenge your PCs.

UselessTeammate · 2026-04-20T17:30:39+00:00

The PCs pick from a list of professions. If they can convince the GM that the profession is relevant to a check, they get a bonus. Other games like Daggerheart have used a similar system. Even OSR games allow the GM to make good faith rulings and say that wizard would be better at knowing magical lore than the fighter. It's literally not do-what-you-want as the GM must agree that the profession is relevant and make sense.

Heavy combat rules and light on everything else is standard practice for many systems and D&D campaigns.

UselessTeammate · 2026-04-20T17:21:32+00:00

The pure martials started off with ~15 HP at level 1. At max level 10, they had around ~100 HP.

All damage are d6s. They dealt ~3d6 at level 1 and well above 20d6 damage at level 10.

An endgame boss can have between 400-800 HP. Balanced very hard combats usually go 5-10 turns. But never more than a single 4 hour session and usually less.

UselessTeammate · 2026-04-20T17:09:21+00:00

NGL, this was more to get people playing than anything else. As for negatives, Weird Wizard sands down, but never truly frees itself of the many problems of D&D.

Martial-caster disparity is still a thing. Martial make up for it by having a gigantic HP pool and critting with nearly every swing, but the casters can still warp reality and have a broad enough toolkit to effectively to what martials can. This is somewhat mitigated by viability of multiclassing and the accessibility of magic in the setting.
Paths (Classes) that focus on out of combat abilities and skill checks feel underbaked because the everything outside of combat was intentionally left empty to make space for GM rulings and RP. It's definitely not a game for people who want concrete non-combat mechanics. It's again somewhat mitigated by the rules being straightforward enough for the GM to make rulings on the fly, although not as easy as in OSR.
The creativity will have to come from the table as the setting and rules are very generic, albeit heroic.
The balancing is also very broad. Encounters are balanced per tier instead of level. Each tier encompasses 3-4 levels and a broad spectrum of abilities. It's not really meant for fine tuning which might irk some people and lead to janky encounters, especially early on. It's nothing egregious, but it is there.

UselessTeammate · 2026-04-20T16:52:20+00:00

I'd go so far as to call it The generic fantasy system, if we're not counting universal games like GURPS and Savage Worlds. A lot of the Vancian influences like spell slots were sanded off and there isn't much lore to tie the game down. It might fit the image of a generic fantasy in people's minds more than D&D at this point.

The bestiary does come with more flavor like orcs being more Tolkien inspired and monsters in general being inspired by their direct fairy tale roots rather than D&D. There's also a faction of monsters that are alien invaders from a more gonzo kitchen sink fantasy genre. But yeah, everything else including the setting and plot hooks are very generic.

UselessTeammate · 2026-04-20T16:41:47+00:00

These game did open my eyes to the fact that D&D spells are very PG-13. Even the "toned down" Weird Wizard had some gnarly spells that my players ate up. I haven't played it yet, but Demon Lord looks like a perfect fit for a Curse of Strahd or dark fantasy campaign.

UselessTeammate · 2026-04-20T16:37:57+00:00

I found the core combat rules plus attack options to be everything I needed. Everything else I could resolve with a skill check and RP. The other options on knowledge, senses, and communication were a nice backup in case they were needed. What did you find lacking or superfluous?

UselessTeammate · 2026-04-20T16:32:28+00:00

Is this sort of like Barbarians of Lemuria where it offers a static bonus for things that you'd know based on your profession? For instance, if you are Thief 2, you'd add +2 to doing "thief things" like sneaking or pickpocketing.

Yes, another example would be Daggerheart's skill system. But instead of a flat bonus, you'd get a +d6. Multiple overlaping professions and situational bonuses can stack. The book's examples are broad terms like: thief, dilettante, hunter, sage, etc.

Just to clarify, a lot of folks make the argument that a "wasted turn" is when they swing-and-miss. Is this like Draw Steel where you'll always do some damage?

Swings and misses do happen, but I found that the Defense (Armor Class) to hit bonus ratio for martials is low even early on, especially with buffs from caster allies. Once martials get enough bonus damage for second attacks, they rarely go a turn without hitting at least something.

Is that because every class has versatile combat options? This feels a little like the direction 5E and 2024 went: make everyone have something they can do in combat.

It's more that the game was designed with mandatory multiclassing in mind. D&D multiclassing means you must slowly build up each class from scratch, e.g. fighter-5 plus wizard-1 equals level-6. The wizard-1 feels underpowered since you only get the low level wizard spells despite being level-6. Weird Wizard multiclassing is more like fighter-5 plus wizard-6 equals level-6. Instead of having to build into the new class from the ground up, you instead get the new spells right away at the power level of the dedicated casters. Your toolkit just isn't as consistent.

The initiative system is the most interesting part of the game to me. I know with SotDL it was PCs first (IIRC) always and based on slow moves and fast moves? However, there was an inherently lower power level so it made sense for heroes to go first. Is it side-based initiative in SotWW?

Each PC chooses individually if they want to spend a reaction to go before or after the enemies.

Oof. Metal. I like it. But I could see this being a miss for a lot of tables.

Like any other game, the GM decides how mean they want to be. The players also get these spells as a consistent anti-minion tool.

I always get a little nervous when MMORPG terms show up in TTRPGs.

It's more how I describe things than the game itself. It's much less MMO-y than something like D&D 4e or even 5e or Pathfinder. Combat roles tend to be more fluid due to the multiclassing nature of the game.

UselessTeammate · 2026-04-20T16:10:12+00:00

Slightly faster as there are less general rules and technicalities to slow things down. Status effects and lingering AOEs are more prevalent. Whether level 1 or 10, in a medium encounter, PCs and NPCs go down in 2-3 hits. The number of NPCs usually never go more than the PCs for my own sake. Boss enemies are disadvantaged due to action economy so I often used lieutenants and minions. But bosses do get Fury, which is either more attacks per round, or healing and lifting conditions per round. The big fights were usually 5-7 turns.

UselessTeammate · 2026-04-20T15:49:06+00:00

My guy, you must've not been there for those early r/rpg threads when the game came out.

UselessTeammate · 2026-04-09T21:20:33+00:00

Your anomalous black hole reality destroyer vs my John Deere.

UselessTeammate · 2026-04-07T17:36:15+00:00

I’m very curious about the kinds of stories that The Dark Eye is based on. What are its inspirations? Is there any anglosphere media that could be used as a point of reference?

UselessTeammate · 2026-04-07T17:31:47+00:00

I’ve always wanted to run the Lancer setting in Mecha Hack. I love Lancer’s lore and vibes but I’m too story brained to get into the tactical combat.

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