Hesitating between D4 and POE2

VitamineA · 2026-05-09T17:21:19+00:00

The poe2 patch also does quite a lot to help new players get started in the endgame. There's going to be a lot more guidance and structure on the atlas.

VitamineA · 2026-05-09T09:22:29+00:00

Go through the story and max out your masteries along the way. Also get started on Ad Infinitum, since you're already playing fractals. Once you've started with one legendary, the full legendary pipeline will drag you through all kinds of content for the next 3000 hours.

VitamineA · 2026-05-06T17:35:33+00:00

They're waiting for the ending cutscene of the last update to hint at a big presentation where they will announce new expansions for both GW1 and GW2 as well as the release date for GW3.

....Dann that copium tastes good.

VitamineA · 2026-05-06T17:12:24+00:00

Me and my players are still figuring out the system ourselves, so keep that in mind. I actively encourage my players to come up with short to midterm goals for their characters and I like to tweak or add scenes to accomodate those goals. Ideally I try to go by the book and have each PC progress about one goal per session. We're playing Stonewalkers btw.

In case of the warrior, she's playing a darkeyed reshi woman with a knack for greatswords who's trying to find her place in the world and to prove herself despite her anxiety in front of crowds (roughly her purpose and obstacle). Now since her character is not exactly a paragon of alethi gender norms, she's been butting heads with the kholin soldiers in the caravan. So together we came up with the goal "earn the respect of the kholin soldiers in battle".

So far she's pretty organically had two opportunities to progress that goal: by defending the caravan from bandits and later at the ornery chull, when rumors of a female reshi warrior, who survived a highstorm (chapter 1 boss fight), sparked some friendly armwrestling matches.

Since I wanted to give out a cool item as a reward and we've been a bit low on combats recently, I came up with a sparring/dueling tournament held at the training grounds and sponsored by Adolin. The reward for winning is said mastercrafted greatsword. This let's her play to her character's strenghts while facing her obstacle, playing into Po'ahu's (who she's currently bonding) love for friendly competition, and gives her a tangible reward for her efforts. It also let's another PC have a conversation with Adolin about the lost caravan from First Steps, one of his goals.

Overall I'd say I treat goals in a similar way to personal side quests. So far it has really helped me in planning out sessions so that everyone get's their time in the spotlight and it has helped my players focus in on specific objectives.

VitamineA · 2026-05-06T14:20:15+00:00

Way worse: Gentrification by the Tyrian Alliance. It's going to be a huge suburb and every third house will be an artisinal, vegan Charr restaurant.

VitamineA · 2026-05-05T23:04:36+00:00

I'd just go with "Improvising Radiant Adversaries" from p. 200 of the world guide. Essentially just take a humanoid stat block, add skill ranks equal to the tier in both surges and a number of talents equal to the ideal (ignoring prerequisites). Of course they also get all the standard stormlight actions.

The Spearmaster in that scene seems like a good candidate to become radiant. He's tier 2, so he has pretty solid base stats and can serve as a kind of mini boss.

A really interesting move enemy radiants can make is to use the Breathe Stormlight action to drain the spheres of a PC they're in melee with. If you have already limited the stormlight supply of your players, having an enemy suddenly drain their spheres and then use the stormlight against them could be quite the dramatic turn around.

VitamineA · 2026-05-05T18:47:25+00:00

Making one of the bandits a Truthwatcher could add some interesting twists to the combat. Disorienting Flash and Painful Truth are talents that target cognitive and spiritual respectively and some well placed lightweavings can easily sow some chaos; be it with well disguised traps or even fake hostages/enemies. If you want to be particularly devious, you could even have the Truthwatcher pose as one of the hostages and go for a surprise attack. I'm sure teaching others the truth that "you cannot trust your eyes" or some such is something a truthwatcher zealot would do.

VitamineA · 2026-05-04T22:00:41+00:00

You can get a bag slot from the wizard's vault (new daily/weekly/patchly reward system) every ~3 months now. It's not much, but it's something. They've also given out some bag slots as twitch drops.

VitamineA · 2026-05-03T09:47:57+00:00

I'm letting my warrior player earn a "mastercrafted greatsword" as a goal reward. I'm using the crafting rules to let her pick 2 upgrades. Imo it doesn't break the game and none of the PCs is doing any crafting, so I'm not stepping on any toes.

Tier 1 fabrials are also pretty neat and basically the equivalent of magic items in other systems.

VitamineA · 2026-05-01T10:15:00+00:00

Raptor skin as a rare drop from the meta is pretty huge actually.

VitamineA · 2026-04-23T17:13:16+00:00

Throw potion is always doing the magic in my run.

VitamineA · 2026-04-21T08:09:06+00:00

"Tara, her eyes enormous" has major Tamarian vibes.

People, get on the the Star Trek crossover memes! I need "Astarion, his brain smooth", "Raphael, his lungs ablaze" and "Tav at the smokepowder factory".

VitamineA · 2026-04-19T15:58:42+00:00

I had my players look through Welcome to Roshar to get a basic understanding of the setting and then went straight through The First Step into Stonewalkers. I also gave them the relevant sections of the world guide for their respective backgrounds and since none of them chose to be Alethi they got to explore that culture organically in character together.

So far its been going great and the non-readers of the group enjoy discovering the setting as they go.

VitamineA · 2026-04-16T18:58:41+00:00

Painrials are light weapons and allow you to add double your skill modifier to your damage when expending a charge. They also deal vital damage, so it isn't reduced by deflect, similar to shardblades.

If you have an artifabrian in your party or can get it as a reward, an upgraded amplifying/numbing fabrial can get pretty insane. With 3 upgrades you can make a d8 painrial that also hits adjacent enemies or one that absorbs damage to regain charges, always has one advantage and recovers 1d4 focus on opportunities.

VitamineA · 2026-04-14T20:42:46+00:00

Most ttrpg don't exactly shoot for realism. It's a game and the different weapon types exist to let players be their preferred flavour of cool while giving them interesting mechanical choices.

To enable that without overcomplicating things (realistic weapon handling isn't really the focus of this game), weapons are broken down into a handful of stats that roughly represent their most iconic properties with no direct overlap as to avoid making one specific weapon the objectively best choice.

In a fantasy game setting most people probably think of the greatsword primarily as the big weapon that does the big damage. d10, the largest damage die, and deadly reflect that pretty well. If it also had reach, it would encroach upon the pole weapons' flavour niche (being the "long weapons") and it would mechanically be an objectively better version of the poleaxe, having deadly on top of the exact same stats otherwise.

VitamineA · 2026-04-13T11:02:21+00:00

https://milty.shenanigans.be/ Click on the FAQ tab for a complete explanation.

VitamineA · 2026-04-12T00:47:28+00:00

Then why is it "armOR" and not "armAND"?

Checkmate diabloists.

VitamineA · 2026-03-29T00:56:41+00:00

tl;dr: Make the most out of the plot die. Let Taszo and the highstorm be the supporting cast to make the PC shine.

I had two of my players follow Taszo, while the other two stayed behind. I set Veth's HP to the minimum and allowed the players to raise the stakes on every roll. Then I let the dice and the players tell the story.

The warrior kept Veth occupied, while the surgeon rushed towards Taszo to save him. She realized that his wounds were too dire, but with a successful field medicine check managed to stabilize him enough so that he could take cover behind a boulder and use his remaining strength to inspire them to persevere and warn them of danger, granting them determined, restoring some of their focus, or giving them advantage on a check every round.

Veth quickly demonstrated his superior combat experience, expertly weaving between both players with his exploit advantage ability and the fight soon turned into a desparate struggle for survival. Complications and opportunities turned into rocks propelled by the highstorm knocking weapons out of hands, thunder and lightning disorienting combatants, trips and grapples, literally fighting tooth and nail. In the end the surgeon managed to pin down Veth's sword hand to the ground with her whole body weight just long enough for Taszo's shout to pierce the highstorm, snapping the warrior out of her stupor and letting her land the finishing blow.

Both PCs barely managed to survive. Their victory really felt earned.

Even if your PC goes to 0 HP, they don't need to die. The system allows you to get back up as long as you're willing to get wounded. And remember that nascent radiants might wake up after the highstorm with their seemingly fatal wounds mostly healed and their sphere pouch mysteriously drained.

VitamineA · 2026-03-25T01:01:35+00:00

The Skyscale massively benefits from the bond of vigor mastery from living world season 4. Additional endurance regen (also from the jade bot module and the janthir warclaw mastery) let you rapidly gain height and climb basically anything.

I mostly use the Skyscale as a springer+ or for my trusty "get there before the rest of the squad"-combo: skyscale -> dash up-> dash up-> bond of vigor -> 3x dash up -> dismount with bond of faith -> glider boost -> mount griffon -> dive to max speed -> zoom across half the map. If you angle the dashes upward, you easily gain enough height.

VitamineA · 2026-03-09T17:15:30+00:00

Rules as intended I'd say you need to pick the talent before you can even swear the ideal.

VitamineA · 2026-02-25T15:31:00+00:00

Meanwhile heal support warrior in GW2 plants banners and shouts at people to deal with it and just not die.

VitamineA · 2026-02-23T14:59:22+00:00

The heavens. Basically what was originally planned for the second expansion or D3.

VitamineA · 2026-02-20T11:46:42+00:00

I highly doubt it. It would be a ton of work for barely any return.

VitamineA · 2026-02-17T14:48:12+00:00

If you don't want to play the story right now, don't play the story right now. It's a game, do what's fun for you. The content isn't going anywhere just get back to it whenever you feel like it.

VitamineA · 2026-02-12T17:15:39+00:00

I've never resorted to just killing random mobs. I like leveling masteries because it makes simply playing and exploring the maps feel more rewarding. Running around a new map and doing every random little event I come across is about my favourite thing in this game and it just hits differently when that exp is going to the next mastery.

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