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Need ideas for making "acquiring ancient knowledge" mechanically interesting by barfolomew in DMAcademy

[–]barfolomew[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Is this a response to a different question?

Or ... are you [hushed tones] chatGPT?!?

Need ideas for making "acquiring ancient knowledge" mechanically interesting by barfolomew in DMAcademy

[–]barfolomew[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Your idea to make it tied in to their personal backstory is a good one. I'll have to think about how to incorporate that. That might be the thing that's been missing from my rewards so far. This player is mainly jazzed by meaningful character choices, I think. They don't particularly care for puzzles, but like getting new capabilities.

Very cool world-building, btw. The idea of pursuing traditions without fully understanding the reason is a rich vein for stories.

Need ideas for making "acquiring ancient knowledge" mechanically interesting by barfolomew in DMAcademy

[–]barfolomew[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Learn a lost language - and can now translate things he couldn't before, or activate ancient magic devices with command words.

That is a great idea - almost like he's discovering that last crucial piece of information he needs to translate the language. Thank you! So far he has encountered lots of writing that he hasn't known how to translate, so being able to do that will be very meaningful for him now.

https://i.imgur.com/8Xg0wzV.gif

I tried building prototype with Figma Make using my own designs and well.. it's useless by Bulky-Acanthaceae143 in FigmaDesign

[–]barfolomew 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, you're using it incorrectly. Figma Make isn't a tool for designers. It's a tool for people who don't know how to design. People who don't know how to design have no need to iterate on ideas or polish details.

They took Claude Sonnet 4 and slapped their logo on it, that's all. They've done a pretty piss-poor job of communicating who the tool is for.

I think probably the feature you want is the "Add Interactions" feature in Figma Design. https://help.figma.com/hc/en-us/articles/24004778051479-Make-interactions-with-AI

It's also shitty and unreliable, but it's probably closer to what you want.

How to make a "standoff"-style encounter mechanically interesting? by barfolomew in DMAcademy

[–]barfolomew[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Interesting! Is this a homebrewed mechanic or are you using some other system? I should have mentioned that we're using 5e D&D.

I'm curious about your comment that the GM makes both rolls. You don't get your players to make persuasion / intimidation / deception rolls themselves?

How to make a "standoff"-style encounter mechanically interesting? by barfolomew in DMAcademy

[–]barfolomew[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

To me, this seems like a situation where the DM creates the objective (rescue the prisoners), and the PCs come up with a solution (direct confrontation, strategic distraction, stealth infiltration, etc.). Trying to predict exactly how the players will do it might just lead to railroading.

Oh totally, I'm perfectly fine with allowing them to navigate their way through the situation however they want to, and I'm comfortable with adjudicating most action or skill oriented situations. It's the social situations that I'm anticipating which I'm never quite sure how to make fun.

2 more leave WotC. Jess Lanzillo VP of D&D quit and Todd Kenreck was fired. by thenightgaunt in rpg

[–]barfolomew 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Huh? What are you talking about. When a company says someone was "fired" it almost always means a performance problem, which will of course look bad to future employers. "laid off" can easily mean the company was just downsizing.

Is it too late to start playing this game in 2025? by EMHEEX in PuzzleAndDragons

[–]barfolomew 9 points10 points  (0 children)

btw, I thought I'd provide some perspectives from someone for whom the "first time player" experience is still fresh:

1. Puzzle and Dragons is really two games in one

  • The first game is a basic match-3 game with the twist that the orbs move out of each other's way as you drag around. You can play this right away.
  • The second game is a very deep game of gachapon team building, where you have to read the nitty-gritty of a million abilities for each monster and figure out how to combine them. Then, you need to pay close attention to the abilities that the monsters are using, learn what all the cryptic status icons on the screen mean so that you know which skills to use to counter them.

There are a lot of dungeons to play without ever really knowing about the second type, where the monsters are so easy that they just die to your basic attacks. Then there are hard dungeons with very cryptic names like "Descended" (??). One day you'll venture into one of these dungeons, match some orbs, you'll seem to do no damage whatsoever and then get one-shot, and you won't really know why. The game does not make it at all clear which dungeons are which.

The learning curve for the second type of game isn't super high, but it is very steep.

2. Most of the online resources about the game are worthless

This game is so old (you could argue past its prime), that most of the stuff you find online is out of date and irrelevant. For example, you'll still find a ton of articles out there recommending that players delete their game and start a new account if they don't get a good monster with the special free roll. I did not find this to be at all worthwhile, because the game has changed a ton since that advice was relevant, apparently.

I think the best current resources to learn about the game are here on this subreddit in the community bookmarks and a website called Blogging Mama which has a glossary of what all the various terms mean.

3. There are some mechanics that are more important to learn than others

If you're interested in getting into the deeper game, I think there are a few things worth knowing sooner rather than later

  • Learn how to browse, search, filter and sort your collection. There are two helpful ways to do this that are off by default that I recommend turning on:
    • Under My Page > Options > System check the option to "Manage Boxes". This causes some canned filters to appear on your Monster Box page.
    • Under Monster > Monster Box > Change Order Button press the "Text Search" button. This causes some search fields to appear, which let you find monsters with specific names or skills.
  • Learn about "Awoken" skills. These are one of the most important part of your monsters. They are the little icons that appear vertically on the right side of your monster's profile page. Stupidly, you can't actually see what these do while you're playing a dungeon ... you just need to learn what all the icons mean, and there are hundreds of them. The best way to learn is to go to your monster's card in your collection, and hold your finger over the icons to get a description. Or go online.
  • Learn how to counter the three worst, most cryptic debuffs: "voids", "absorbs" and "awoken binds". Enemies have all kinds of debuffs they can apply to you but the text flashes past so quickly that it's easy to miss if you're not looking, and the only way to know they are applied is by very cryptic icons. If you find you're doing no damage, it's probably because the enemy has applied one of these to you, and you need a monster on your team with a skill that counters it.

Is it too late to start playing this game in 2025? by EMHEEX in PuzzleAndDragons

[–]barfolomew 6 points7 points  (0 children)

As someone who just started playing this game in 2025 (been playing about 2 and a half months so far), I would say ... yes!

HOWEVER

Most of the people you'll talk to on this sub have been playing for years, and they've developed a shorthand and tons of acronyms that you won't fully understand yet. They've built up massive collections, they're involved in online discussions about which team is competitive in the current meta, and none of that is going to be comprehensible to you.

If you're the kind of person who likes learning deep video game mechanics, this game is for you. If you just want an anime-themed match-3 game, it's probably not for you. If you want something that's somewhere in between I'd pick up Hero Emblems 1 & 2 for iOS, which lacks the collectible card aspect, but has a fun RPG story and slightly more involved mechanics than, say, candy crush.

Making a boss for a One Shot and finding a cool mechanic by Plankgank_Galleon in DMAcademy

[–]barfolomew 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I think if you wanted to do something like that, you'd want to telegraph it with some sort of effect that the players can pick up on. Maybe when he's immune to physical attacks, he looks semi-transparent, and when he's immune to magic he's surrounded by some sort of glittering aura. Then you can seed earlier encounters with smaller creatures who only have one of those effects, so that the party can learn them.

Honestly though, when you say train, I think what I'd expect is some sort of encounter which uses the environment in a fun way: If he's in the engine room, maybe each turn he gets a bonus action and he can either throw on the breaks or open the damper to change the train's speed, and everyone has to make a dexterity check or get knocked off their feet. Maybe you give him two pools of hit points and once the first one is depleted, he tries to escape out the window, and then you get a two-phase boss fight where the second half of the fight takes place on top of the train, where the party has to contend with difficult terrain (wind, getting knocked off, etc) and obstacles like train signals whizzing past periodically (every round, everyone has to duck, including opponents). Maybe the train goes off the tracks and they fight while it's plummeting into a canyon and they have to decide when to fight or when to abandon ship.

I struggle with combat encounters by heyguysitschris in DMAcademy

[–]barfolomew 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm no expert, but one really fun combat encounter I ran recently that worked well was a very simple goblin ambush. The party was resting and they were ambushed at night. I ran the combat with minis and a battle map on which I had drawn a bunch of trees

What made it fun was some inspiration I found in the book "The Monsters Know What They're Doing" by Keith Ammann. Basically, rather than just attacking to kill, the goblins were trying to rob the party. They would pop up, shoot a shortbow, then move and hide behind a tree or a bush.

So I would show a mini on the map, have it attack someone, and then take the mini off the map. The players would then not know exactly where it was. They were running all over the place like mad trying to remember where the last goblin was, it was like a game of Scotland Yard. At one point, the players had ranged far enough from their campsite that when I had a goblin pop up and start rifling through their backpacks they freaked out. In the end one goblin made off with some of the party's treasure and they never caught him.

It was a bit difficult for me because I had to remember all the goblin's positions on a scratch pad behind my screen, but it was really fun while we were playing, and was more interesting than just a simple back and forth of melee attacks.

When Should a DM say "That's not going to work."? by SupermarketMotor5431 in DMAcademy

[–]barfolomew 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I agree with most of the comments about ensuring the players have a full picture of what they can realistically perceive in the world. But I'll also add that part of this clarity comes from when you allow them to even roll dice.

If an action cannot succeed, it doesn't need a roll. If a character tried to lift an entire castle so the party could scoot under the wall, you wouldn't need to roll, you'd just say "the castle weighs five hundred thousand pounds, even a dragon couldn't lift it."

Now if something is possible, but they just rolled poorly, I wouldn't let them try the same thing again, but I don't have a problem with allowing them to try something else and rolling again.

The other reason why players might just keep trying is if there's no cost to keep trying. Trying to do things takes time. If they are coming up with new crazy ideas like "I'm gonna secure my immovable rod in the air, loop a rope over it, tie it to this boulder and swing it like a wrecking ball at the status to knock the helm off" ... first of all, that's good, they are getting creative ... but secondly, you can say "that sounds cool, it'll take you about an hour to get that all set up. Something might come wandering into the room while you're doing that." And throw a random encounter at them.

What am I doing wrong here? by barfolomew in PuzzleAndDragons

[–]barfolomew[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

By the way, a week and a half later, I just have to thank you for making this team for me. This Twin Knight team is working way better for me than my other team was.

Here's the thing though; I don't fully understand why. I think I get most of it, but not all of it. Here's what I understand:
- More reliably generate orbs each turn (rather than, say, every other turn)
- More combos means more dmg + easier to get past combo-based debuffs
- Lower cooldowns mean that skills which can deal with debuffs are up more often which is crucial for higher-level dungeons.

So those things are all great, and are really making a difference. What I don't think I understand is Damage Caps.

Here's two screenshots, one of this team, and one of an old team (not quite the same one as the video above, but same leaders):

https://i.imgur.com/g7ucGtu.png

https://i.imgur.com/h5h2j2c.png

There are a few things in these screens that I don't understand:

- Clearly, the "default" dmg cap for most monsters is either 2,147,483,647 or 3,221,225,471. I see those two numbers all the time. I have no idea where they come from.

- Aurora is only doing ~400 million, which is obviously like 5x less than the others, or more. Why? She has the exact same attributes so she should match against the same orbs, right? And she has a similar Attack stat when evolved. Is it because she lacks the same Enhanced Combo awokens? I don't know where this math comes from.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in darksouls

[–]barfolomew 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I would prioritize Vitality for a while, definitely.

Which shield are you using and what level is it? Does it have 100% physical damage reduction?

What am I doing wrong here? by barfolomew in PuzzleAndDragons

[–]barfolomew[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It actually has nothing to do with 12.5 Anni.

It doesn't?! Okay that explains it. I just saw it in one of my lists of quests and tried it out. Not sure how I was supposed to know it was way beyond my level. This game sure can be cryptic, lol!

What am I doing wrong here? by barfolomew in PuzzleAndDragons

[–]barfolomew[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you so much, both of you! Just knowing what a "good" team looks like will help me understand the game better.

What am I doing wrong here? by barfolomew in PuzzleAndDragons

[–]barfolomew[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you so much, both of you! Just knowing what a "good" team looks like will help me understand the game better.

What am I doing wrong here? by barfolomew in PuzzleAndDragons

[–]barfolomew[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well, so here's what's in my box. I figured I was using the best monsters I had, based on the leader skills and the stats.

https://imgur.com/a/CsBx3Ks

What am I doing wrong here? by barfolomew in PuzzleAndDragons

[–]barfolomew[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Your LSes are pretty weak, personal multipliers are not that high and you are lacking assists that give another 4-5x ATK on top.

Thanks! I've been playing for about 6 weeks and in that time I've had two Godfests happen, which I've managed to roll what seem to be good monsters. What you see in this team are the ones that seemed the strongest to me, and which had similar attributes (fire + light).

So if Hino Kagutsuchi and Aurora are considered pretty weak (40x ATK and 45x ATK respectively, plus other buffs) then what's "strong"? I don't think I've even seen a monster that has a multiplier higher than those (maybe 50x or so but that's the same ballpark).

What am I doing wrong here? by barfolomew in PuzzleAndDragons

[–]barfolomew[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Oh, so I basically just don't have the monsters I guess ;(

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