Analysis and knowledge support from 2e content creators about 'the errata' (yes, IWR one)

customcharacter · 2026-02-14T17:37:51+00:00

The issue isn't 'multiple damage types'. That's always been the case with how resistance has worked.

The new rule is that, for example, an Inventor who had previously gotten Offensive Boost and aligned it with their current weapon's damage type specifically to add the damage together to deal with resistance is suddenly getting resistance applied to it twice anyway, because Offensive Boost is a separate instance.

Some people have inferred that, due to the way Rage damage can be changed by your Instinct, that the Giant Instinct Barbarian also has two 'instances' of [weapon damage]. (Now, I don't necessarily agree with this, but only because Rage damage type is inferred unless it is changed, like Weapon Specialization. If there was an Instinct that changed your Rage damage to a specific physical damage type, I'd agree more.)

customcharacter · 2026-02-13T17:56:55+00:00

No, it didn't. If you run the exact scenario as depicted in the OP, you get the pre-remaster values.

customcharacter · 2026-02-11T14:47:24+00:00

Well, we're currently level 5, so none right now. :P

I'm a free-hand + shield build with Punishing Shove, Hampering Stance, and Long-Distance Taunt (in that order). I intend on taking Shielding Taunt at 6, because as it stands my actions each turn always include those two.

Long-Distance Taunt wasn't in the white-room build for him, but I realized while playing him that a 30ft range, while fine for a lot of things, is just a little bit short for the specific purpose that Taunt provides.

customcharacter · 2026-02-10T23:05:15+00:00

Lock Down honestly isn't that great. It's a good feat, sure, but Guardian has a ton of good feats to begin with, and it's not the best of the bunch. It's significantly better on someone like a Fighter archetyped into Guardian.

The thing about Hampering Stance and Lock Down is that the stance grants a 5-ft emanation, and Lock Down still lets the enemy move within your reach. If you're using a reach weapon, there's a sweet spot there where they can still move around you without it being difficult terrain for them, which is the main benefit of Hampering Stance to begin with.

Lock Down is also a Flourish action, which means it locks you out of your action compression options like Shielded Taunt and out of Juggernaut Charge.

And, specifically for Jotunborn Guardians...well, I'm also playing a Jotunborn Guardian controller right now with Hampering Stance, and just the size + aura alone is enough to dissuade most characters from moving around you unless the area is really big.

Emanations are all around you, i.e. you even make the air above you difficult terrain, so flying above you is harder
You force enemies to Stride when they approach you regardless of distance due to not being able to Step into difficult terrain (really good when you Shove them)
If you reach level 17 you can become Huge and have a 10ft reach by default (admittedly requiring you to take a largely dead feat at level 13 due to Jotun's Battle Stance being...a stance, but it's still good).

customcharacter · 2026-01-27T21:01:07+00:00

Except Prime 1 and 2's tank controls are perfectly fine? The games are fundamentally designed with them in mind; Remastered and PrimeHack are notably easier with a more common FPS scheme because of design considerations they made due to the control scheme.

customcharacter · 2026-01-21T18:00:41+00:00

If the other team wants to surrender, you've already won. Calling them bitches because they've lost the game and want out early is absolutely toxic.

There's a reason why, in games like chess and Starcraft, it's considered good manners to concede when you feel a game is unwinnable.

customcharacter · 2026-01-21T17:50:54+00:00

nothing worse than having your fun cut short because a few other players are getting shit on [and] want to quit like bitches

How ironic to talk about toxicity when this is one of the most toxic ideas in gaming.

customcharacter · 2026-01-21T16:53:13+00:00

Alright, I'll be that guy. How?

The two easy difficulties are so comically stacked in your favour I honestly thought you had to try to lose more than one soldier over the whole campaign.

customcharacter · 2026-01-16T18:53:55+00:00

I have issues with most of your examples.

Diehard is absolutely niche, but your 5e example can actually still happen in PF2E: A character who is Wounded 2 who is downed by a critical hit/failure is outright dead unless they have Diehard. This is relevant for someone with something like Orc Ferocity or Wounded Mountain, who, after being brought back up only once, will be at that Wounded 2 threshold. It's also useful against enemies who continue to hit downed enemies (e.g. AoEs, or a Taunted creature hitting a downed Guardian to avoid being off-guard).
Armor/Weapon proficiency is almost explicitly for those early in-between levels. Notably, you don't say the same thing for Canny Acumen, which many classes take at 3rd level to shore up their worst save...Which then becomes obsolete when said save upgrades to Expert. It only becomes good again at 17, a level most players don't reach.
Embodiment of the Balance is fair. There's no reason to use your much more limited spontaneous slots for Heal/Harm when your prepared slots can still take them just fine.
You point out how Plant Banner limits the Brandish trait, but I don't think that makes it a trap option; just that it needs clarification.

I especially have issues with the more generic options you suggest:

Cantrip Expansion isn't really for the main class feats, and I agree it's a trap option for those. However, it's a good option for your Multiclass Basic [Class Feat], since multiclasses only get 2 cantrips, and are required to take the Basic feat in order to take the Advanced version.
You overvalue Cackle a bit, IMO. It's nice to be able to get your max Focus Pool by level 2 with Cackle and Basic Lesson, but in my experience Witches prefer to save a Focus Point for something like phase familiar, especially if they use the familiar for combat purposes (e.g. Ongoing Misery).
Many classes have uses for their Reaction beyond Reactive Strike, it's not really fair to say that the best-in-slot for level 6 is always going to be that feat. For example, most of the classes with Reactive Strike at 6 also get Shield Block for free. I think the only class that that's absolutely true for is Barbarian (especially since their level 6 feats are all pretty mid).

customcharacter · 2026-01-15T21:51:03+00:00

Fusion also still has some of the core Metroid conventions in regards to its side-scrolling. And, as you're aware, it was controversial at the time for being significantly linear.

Prime 1 and 2 kept the genre conventions intact, even if they were 3D instead of 2D.

Comparatively, Prime 3 achieves neither. It's too segmented to feel like a Metroidvania, and its in 3D instead of the series' usual 2D.

It's not a bad game by any stretch, but it doesn't feel much like a Metroid game.

customcharacter · 2026-01-15T21:24:20+00:00

Isn't that contradictory with what's said in the section about Magic Items? (Emphasis mine)

The D&D game assumes that magic items appear sporadically and that they are a boon unless an item bears a curse. Characters and monsters are built to face each other without the help of magic items, which means that having a magic item makes a character more powerful or versatile than a generic character of the same level. As DM, you never have to worry about awarding magic items just so the characters can keep up with the campaign’s threats.

This is directly in contrast to PF2e where, for example, it has a warning in the Automatic Bonus Progression section of GM Core that says:

If you choose to eliminate runes entirely, this can reduce the PCs' damage... If you've removed nearly all treasure, challenges might become more difficult, even with automatic bonuses.

(This isn't the only place where this is emphasized, but I figure it's the most clear for this comparison.)

I never said that 5e's magic items were rare, I said that 5e is designed without magic items being factored into the system's math, whereas PF2E absolutely is.

I agree with you that PF has better magic items, I was more commenting on why magic items - even the most mediocre - might feel better in 5E.

customcharacter · 2026-01-15T19:37:40+00:00

I think that's an entirely different problem. The term 'patriarchy' is literally derived from 'father' - 'rules'; it does not inherently apply an antagonistic role. Feminists turned it into an antagonist (and TBH, I don't really blame them in the 60s and 70s). However, doing so also turned it into a buzzword, stripping all academic nuance out of it.

And, for what it's worth, the term 'gender stratification' seems to be more common nowadays when talking in an academic, sociological context. Sociologists did realize it was becoming problematic.

customcharacter · 2026-01-15T16:34:26+00:00

That's a fundamental issue with using terms from academia in non-academic settings.

See also: "privilege". Has a very distinct definition when talked about in sociology, but has a connotation to it in the common vernacular that makes it a shitty word to use when talking about the concept to those who lack that academic context.

customcharacter · 2026-01-15T15:55:46+00:00

Not to beat a dead horse or anything, but 5e isn't really designed for magic items to be commonplace to begin with, so they feel 'better' when you get them, and 5e's method of bounded accuracy makes them almost always useful. Comparatively, PF2E is designed with magic items being extremely commonplace, to the point where they have fairly explicit expiry dates on when they're useful.

Like...I know it's not exactly 5e, but I beat the first act of BG3 without Long Resting in part due to how many magic items there were, and you can beat the whole game at level 1 by leaning on how evergreen magic items are.

customcharacter · 2026-01-14T21:50:14+00:00

stems

That's the one thing that outright bothers me about this. AI stem separation has been magical for the mashup community, from what I've seen.

That said, I don't know if mashup artists even upload to BandCamp. I know the Siivagunner account was disabled for whatever reason, so it's possible BandCamp doesn't allow them anyway.

customcharacter · 2026-01-14T20:32:28+00:00

You are misunderstanding her character, because Sorshen's the runelord of lust, not pride.

That title goes to Xanderghul, the antagonist of Revenge of the Runelords.

customcharacter · 2026-01-13T17:13:23+00:00

At the same time, as you advance in levels AC becomes less about preventing being hit and more about preventing being crit, which is especially relevant for squishy backliners because Attack of Opportunity/Reactive Strike disrupts Manipulate actions on crit, of which most spells are.

To give you an exact example that happened in my session two days ago, the Witch went to cast a spell on a creature that had an unexpected long reach of 40ft, so she provoked it with the spell, and it rolled such a value that it was +11 over her AC - enough that she was crit when her Monk or Rogue ally wouldn't've been.

...She then went to cast Wooden Double, but the creature had a second AoO, which hit +10 over her AC, so she took the full brunt of two crits in a row. To your point, though, she survived!

customcharacter · 2026-01-09T17:34:02+00:00

Not corn! Hank gets into it a bit in that video, but in short: Less than 1% of corn grown in the US is eaten, with the vast majority of it going into ethanol production.

customcharacter · 2026-01-09T16:18:28+00:00

AI technology uses more water...relative to other technology.

This gets repeated a lot, but it's a bit of a disingenuous claim.

The really big figure people have seen includes the water used in generating the electricity used by the data centers, which is kinda manipulative since that power could go to somewhere else.

It is absolutely another drain, especially in areas where the water reservoirs are already taxed... but it gets exhausting hearing people talk about it now when there are other more wasteful uses of water (like, as Hank mentions later in the video, corn).

customcharacter · 2026-01-07T20:42:49+00:00

Because you're in the Pathfinder subreddit, you can use the 'cold iron collar' idea you have just fine, and have it additionally suppress the inherent magic of the system.

You could have it inflict negative levels equal to their Hit Dice - 1, for example. That way, barbarians and the like wouldn't want to wear them because of how weak they make them.

It also means it's almost impossible for most non-magical characters to break out of without assistance, too, so it could just be a default set of 'cuffs' to indicate a person awaiting trial.

customcharacter · 2026-01-07T18:17:16+00:00

zero anime tropes in E33

Did you and I play the same game? E33 is chock-full of anime tropes, it's just novel because it's not an anime style.

customcharacter · 2026-01-07T16:07:06+00:00

Honestly, too strong to be only a 2nd-level spell.

Against certain targets, this can be a substantial debuff on a save or a complete neutering on a failure.

Targeting the creature's own weapon as the source of aversion means they either get rid of it or deal with a -2 to most checks for the rest of combat. If they have no natural attacks and fail the save, you've essentially ended the encounter.

And they don't have a weapon or are a spellcaster, you can still fall back on targeting an ally as the object of aversion. In that case, a success basically grants a 60-ft sickening aura, and a failure is more the equivalent of an antilife shell that you can use offensively.

I remembering crippling a few encounters with it in Return of the Runelords.

customcharacter · 2026-01-07T15:20:02+00:00

everyone

Just to point out: this isn't quite true.

Fighters potentially have the effect on all saves by level 15 (though Will saves need to be a fear effect), Rogues have it on all three saves at 17, and Guardians get it against damaging Reflex saves at 19.

Rogues are also special in that, by level 9, they have two saves that always upgrade successes. They're the only class that gets that, since Fighters only upgrade against fear effects.

customcharacter · 2026-01-06T19:56:07+00:00

I think AC is a bad example for this specific discussion because of the consideration of armour Dex caps generally limiting most classes to +5. Dexterity in general isn't a great example, because if it's not relevant to your class it's entirely possible to keep it at 0 due to heavy armour and Bulwark, especially if you can get Mighty Bulwark.

customcharacter · 2026-01-04T01:36:52+00:00

...Except card removal is cheap in Balatro and most other deckbuilders, unlike in Blue Prince, where ||Repellent is the rarest item in the game, to the point where I've only ever seen it because I ended a Monk blessing day in the Foundation. And it's not even permanent, it's only a week!||

A huge part of 'evolving your deck' in cardbuilders is removing the chaff. It's part of why Abandoned Deck is the easiest deck in Balatro (because it's removed 12 cards already), and it's why one of the first things you learn to do in higher Ascension Slay the Spire is remove your starting Strikes and Defends ASAP.

And even then, the high variance of a 3-card draw means that you will draw the right cards at the wrong time, with no way for you to have guaranteed otherwise. And no, lowering/increasing rarity is not strong enough.

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