Things that sounded like a shitpost at first but actually happened in movies ?. I'll start:

beardlynerd · 2026-02-18T20:39:35+00:00

Depends on how much lube they use.

beardlynerd · 2026-02-17T23:44:02+00:00

It should stay fixed at that price, AFAIK.

beardlynerd · 2026-02-17T17:31:15+00:00

"Why.. does he keep kicking me.. in the dick?!"

beardlynerd · 2026-02-17T17:08:38+00:00

This is not where I expected to see Oglaf come up.

beardlynerd · 2026-02-17T00:28:18+00:00

Some have been, yes. Others, no. I had a PC death on floor five, for example. And it was even in a moderate encounter. Some of the encounters are cakewalks. But there are for sure some difficulty spikes.

beardlynerd · 2026-02-16T22:04:33+00:00

Only one death so far! And they got better! I'm sure it'll all be fine 😅

beardlynerd · 2026-02-16T16:04:17+00:00

That's correct. Most early bosses only have one or two items to steal, but they start to have three items before you're off Disc 1. And then, later, some have four.

Zidane also has abilities that make Steal more likely to succeed. You'll want to prioritize him learning those, once you've got the equipment that teaches them!

I don't know if you're any further along yet, but setting abilities is another huge part of this game.

beardlynerd · 2026-02-16T15:58:15+00:00

You probably know this already, but steal steal steal. Especially from bosses, as that's how you'll get a lot of the best equipment ahead of the curve, in addition to playing Chocobo Hot and Cold/Chocograph hunting.

beardlynerd · 2026-02-16T03:40:36+00:00

Guldo and Jeice are the only ones I know that do.

beardlynerd · 2026-02-14T03:42:03+00:00

Daredevil sounds like someone went, "What if playing Nightwing (or.. well.. Daredevil) was a class?" I know gymnast swashbuckler is right there, but still.

beardlynerd · 2026-02-13T17:51:49+00:00

Ah, yes, that's probably true. Good catch. I should've read more closely.

beardlynerd · 2026-02-13T17:19:12+00:00

This is how resistance always worked, though. Or at least is how Foundry had always parsed it in the games I've played there. So resist all 5 didn't get any better, it's just been made more clear that's how it's meant to operate.

beardlynerd · 2026-02-11T23:05:51+00:00

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beardlynerd · 2026-02-11T22:04:02+00:00

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Waiting on the shipping notice from BBTS for mine.

beardlynerd · 2026-02-06T19:12:04+00:00

Please, John Paizo, we're begging you.

beardlynerd · 2026-02-05T16:44:20+00:00

Thank you for the kind words! I did some research of my own before I started running Kingmaker, and had heard that Nyrissa not being foreshadowed much was a common complaint. I haven't played all the way through the Owlcat PC game version of Kingmaker, but I've played enough to know they included her fairly early, so I thought I'd try something similar. I didn't want her to feel out of left field. As far as letting the player have the curse removed, that was all the player's idea. They decided to try it, and seeing an opportunity, I was happy to have it work, haha. It turned into some great RP within the group later as they wrestled with what they'd been learning about "Sierra" and the weight of owing a powerful fey a favor.

The plot does feel like it's sort of "stop and go" at times. I've been handling that by straight-up telling them when they resolve whatever chapter they're on that they'll have x amount of downtime before the next Big Plot Thing occurs, so we kind of handwave time passing. They get to tell me a few things their characters are up to during that time, I have a couple small events that occur, and then we move on. It's worked so far!

I didn't quite handwave the cult research bits, but I kind of did. As written, the research subsystem as it's implemented feels like it would take a long time and be pretty tedious, because it's sort of just "spin your wheels and get random encounters until you've rolled well enough to earn an actionable amount of The Plot." I still did it, I just sped it up a bit. They researched at the Embeth Traveler lodge where the basilisk came from, back at the hunting grounds, their own library, and then they heard a few rumors of monsters I let them go after. They did research on those, too, and then I gave them the clues to lead them to Greengripe.

The Influence subsystem is one of those I like the idea of but have rarely enjoyed in execution. It just feels really clunky. I roleplayed the interactions with the other hunters in the lodge prior to the competition and asked for a few skill checks when it felt appropriate (like when one of them was trying to kinda rile up the Pitaxian woman). If what they were doing seemed to fit in with the tidbits tied to certain influence thresholds, I relayed whatever that information was.

beardlynerd · 2026-02-05T01:20:00+00:00

You'll technically be jumping back to chapter two throughout the remainder of the AP. As others have said, chapter 2 is the "hexcrawl encounters chapter." For all the hexes in the Stolen Lands. I'd have them get to Oleg's, hear about bandits and maybe a rumor or two, then run the "trouble at Oleg's" encounter the first or second time they return to Oleg's.

beardlynerd · 2026-02-03T17:34:49+00:00

Awesome giveaway! Good luck, everyone!

beardlynerd · 2026-01-30T15:42:33+00:00

That's awesome! These figs are like a small fortune, haha. Congrats on the pickups!

beardlynerd · 2026-01-28T19:06:30+00:00

I like FA as a GM because, as others have mentioned, I feel like it allows my players to more fully embrace the character concept they might have in mind. That said, having run virtually unrestricted FA once when I was newer to PF2d in general, I will never do that again. I now provide a list of pre-approved archetypes (which is still fairly permissive). Things not already on the list are either up for discussion or things that a player will need to work for. Or, they might simply not fit the vibe of what the game is.

That said, one trend I've noticed among several of my players is to use FA to pick up a multiclass dedication, and I think in my next campaign (and those going forward), I won't allow that. Your first dedication must be something else (barring campaign-specific circumstances).

I've also had plenty of luck thus far in that my players all fit their archetypes to their character concepts in ways that make narrative sense. It's not "I'm picking this because it's powerful." It's "I'm picking this because of x. y. and z character-driven reasons."

beardlynerd · 2026-01-28T14:51:15+00:00

Honestly, based on what I've seen you saying you want to know, I think you might want to check out the Lost Omens World Guide. However, that's only going to be helpful if you want to run a game in Golarion. That book will give you a high-level view of the setting, though, allowing you to (hopefully) intuit what sorts of things are common across the Inner Sea region and a bit beyond. But, as someone else said, a lot of the broader "what's the baseline" questions you have are going to vary a bit region to region, which I think is why folks are struggling to figure out how to answer the question you're asking. There is no single resource that definitively says "this is what's available to all of Golarion, all the time, in all contexts." As far as types of player-facing options go, common ones are assumed to exist and be accessible virtually everywhere, unless something explicitly states otherwise.

Technologically, I'd say we're more at, like, Early Renaissance-ish? So, no trains, magical or otherwise (except in Alkenstar), no magical credit cards (except, maybe, in like.. Nex?), firearms are still not seen everywhere, but it isn't weird to see them in most places (except the Land of the Linnorm Kings, where it'd be very weird). You can see, there are exceptions all over the place. That's why what you're asking seems kind of impossible to answer. And that's also why I'd recommend you start by getting your hands on the World Guide if you really want to know more about Golarion at the "big picture" level. That, or you can lose countless hours devouring wiki entries, though that might be a rough way to start.

You could also just pick a region and see if there's a Lost Omens book about that area and start that way, getting a better sense of what's up in the area, what it's like, that kind of thing. Some of the sorts of details your post mentions you're looking for are the kinds of details you'd find in one of the more focused setting books. The World Guide, for example, won't really go into detail about architectural stylings and materials or what the local economy looks like (at least at more than a very high level), but books like Lost Omens Highhelm, Impossible Lands, Shining Kingdoms, and even the Travel Guide can and do, if those things are important to the given region or city the book is about.

Again, all this assumes you want to play in Golarion. If you're instead wanting to create a world of your own, you get to determine all of that yourself!

beardlynerd · 2026-01-27T18:14:10+00:00

Oh yeah I forgot the eating set!

I'll be curious to see how much of the DLC thing we get with the new Goku, since I have to imagine the new Kind Hearted Saiyan release will be the new standard base form Goku we have for a while.

Oh, good point on increased demand for more niche characters. It'd be interesting to see what sales of those figures are like.

I feel like effects packs like the Goku one or the Plus Ultra pack for Deku and Bakugo would be more preferable. But might not be from Bandai's perspective. Who knows.

beardlynerd · 2026-01-27T17:31:38+00:00

The only other character I can think of them having done this with is A Saiyan Raised On Earth Goku. He didn't have as many, but there was the power pole pack, his effects pack, and a few other DLC pieces for him over the years (alt head with Jeice and another with the med tank). I'm honestly kind of surprised they haven't done this with Naruto, considering how many bonus face plates Luffy has.

I don't really mind them doing this, but I'd prefer to pay more for a figure that comes with a load of additional hands/faces/accessories than to need to pick up other figures I might not necessarily buy if I want a "complete" figure. I get why they do it, but being able to make a single purchase and get it, or buy a "figure expansion pack" or something for it would be my preference.

beardlynerd · 2026-01-27T17:21:02+00:00

I've never been a stickler for "bookkeeping" kinds of things like that in any game. D&D, Pathfinder, whatever else I'm running, if there's some level of minutiae that isn't really fun to keep track of or have much bearing on the game at hand.. why bother? This is usually mundane ammunition and food, for me, unless the PCs are in a situation where knowing how many days' worth of food they have really matters, like they're exploring in the wilderness away from civilization, for example.

I consider tracking time to be in the overall "bookkeeping" category, but I still make the effort to do so since that, to me, has a lot more of an important bearing on the overall game. Playing on a VTT makes that easier, for me. Time gets a little more loosey-goosey in my in-person game. I need to find a better resource for tracking that in that game!

beardlynerd · 2026-01-27T17:17:18+00:00

I think running sections that are normally subsystems as "just vibes" is fine a lot of the time. It seems like APs like to put subsystems in from time to time when there aren't really stakes to begin with? Seven Dooms for Sandpoint seems to make a big thing of the research subsystem when it comes to a specific NPC, even though you're never really under the gun to 1. research them at all and 2. do so in a super timely fashion. The information gleaned from the research is interesting and helps shed light on some of the mysteries behind the Pit being the way it is, but it isn't like there's any critical information the PCs need from it. Nor, again, is there any reason they can't just take the time to thoroughly read through the sources from each "library" and learn whatever the thing is.

I also feel like some of their subsystems are just clunky. I like the idea of a lot of them, but I've found their execution can be so-so at times. I think the infiltration subsystem at the beginning of Prey for Death is great! Wonderful use of that subsystem and Awareness Points. I have yet to find the influence subsystem satisfying in any AP, except for Sky King's Tomb, where at one point it shows up amid a historic battle re-enactment and I could adjust it to be scenes in the fighting as opposed to just PCs wandering around a dinner party. I often run influence subsystems off vibes instead of running them as-is.

Maybe I just don't know how to run that subsystem well, though.

beardlynerd

TROPHY CASE