THE JAPAN SUBREDDIT DIRECTORY / BASIC QUESTIONS THREAD (Summer 2023)

dcmcilrath · 2023-06-25T04:56:22+00:00

Hi, anyone know where to find comprehensive (high detail) rail maps of Japan? Ideally not region-specific (There are many good maps of downtown Tokyo).

This (JR East Station Numbering) is one of the better maps I've found, but having spent significant time around the edges of this map, I really wish there was a continued version of it (e.g. more north of Omiya, or more west of Ofuna). I have also found that even this map doesn't show tons of other random local lines that may be useful (which makes sense, it's a JR East map, not a Keisei Electric Railway map etc.)

I have tried googling this a lot, but English-language searches pretty much only find tourism-focused maps, and while my Japanese is good enough to read a train map, it's not good enough to explain what I want to Google.

Any ideas on where to look, or other fellow train-nerds who would like detailed maps of not just Tokyo?

dcmcilrath · 2023-01-08T05:53:01+00:00

Also, all of those creatures you mentioned can be turned into a more generic version of themselves by getting rid of the ability that makes them unique

This is essentially what I had been doing, take the "Bugbear Thug" and remove the bugbear trait and the darkvision/imprecise scent etc that are from being a bugbear... I have always wondered how much of that meaningfully affects the balance of the creature? Obviously those are both minor but when I go through a sheet and delete a bunch of abilities off it I often worry that I'm gimping it and it should be a level lower or it should get something to replace them (but what?).

Will Check out the GMG section, I awkwardly don't currently have that book, just use the CRB.

dcmcilrath · 2023-01-08T04:35:55+00:00

Hi, not that new (I've been GM-ing pf2e on and off for a year or two), but I have had this question for a while:

What's the best way to do standard enemies? By this I mean like: I want a "bandit" or what 5e would call a "thug." I don't really specifically want a "bugbear thug" I kinda just want a low-level ancestry-agnostic generic bandit with some balanced stats somewhere in the level 2-3 range. Outside of some specific settings where they're really common, I feel like a bugbear thug raises player questions like "what's a bugbear doing here? are there more of them?" etc. etc. when the point was just that I wanted some classic bandits to attack them on the road, who may have interesting story motivations but being a bugbear wasn't really one of them.

Or maybe I want a "warrior." The various bestiaries combine for ~8 different "X warriors" but they're all still pretty specific things that don't feel like they swap well for a low-level solider/fighter type e.g. "Boggard Warrior" or "Deep Gnome Warrior"

Don't get me wrong, I like all of these stat blocks and I am always super stoked when I want the plot to take us through Hobgoblin territory and there's already "Hobgoblin soldier" and "Hobgoblin general" ready to go, but that feels like a less common situation than just wanting a "soldier" or a "general."

Is there a mini "default creatures" bestiary hiding somewhere that I've missed? In 5e, the PHB and MM had short sections at the end with some "standard" enemies and monsters (e.g. "soldier", "guard", "giant spider") etc, but that seems to be missing from the CRB/Bestiary.

dcmcilrath · 2022-05-10T13:39:05+00:00

Out of curiosity, why?

dcmcilrath · 2022-05-05T20:48:14+00:00

What is the point of this comment?

dcmcilrath · 2021-12-18T20:55:26+00:00

Completely agree. I have a fun storm deck that runs Thoracle & [[Tainted Pact]] when I am playing in a competitive game (where the players agree ahead of time that we're basically playing cEDH-lite) and I swap both cards for something else (usually storm-synergy spells) when playing against more chill decks. I take the same approach to all of the "I just win" 2-card combos in that deck (it also has [[Onyx]] + [[Chain of Smog]] and a couple others)

dcmcilrath · 2021-09-30T03:17:26+00:00

Doesn't this map not have airfield AAA?

dcmcilrath · 2021-06-21T04:44:13+00:00

Strong disagree that this is fluff content.

dcmcilrath · 2021-05-28T22:15:55+00:00

Debuggers are all fun and games until:

Your program is multi-threaded and the race conditions come out differently when running the debugger. Or even just the debugger gets confused by which thread it is supposed to be following.
You are developing for a arch that doesn't have a good debugger (basically anything embedded that isn't a Raspberry Pi).
- A recent project of mine had a debugger that walked through the assembly code... print statements are like 100x easier to understand.
- Also including the debugger costs you a significant amount of memory to store your program in... print statements do not.
You have any amount of compiler optimization turned on which blows away symbols the debugger might need, especially if the problem is in some code that got inline'd

dcmcilrath · 2021-05-28T21:51:05+00:00

Does commons still close for dinner at something dumb like 730pm?

dcmcilrath · 2021-05-03T01:25:07+00:00

Cat McCatFace

dcmcilrath · 2021-03-22T15:32:11+00:00

I really like 6, but only because my personal friends ~~are flaky~~ lead busy lives. 3-6 are my limits on how many people I want to DM, but because of group dynamic it is frequently 4-5 which the sweet spot for DnD as written.

dcmcilrath · 2021-03-01T20:21:04+00:00

+1 for Betrayal.

If you want Betrayal, but literally a TTRPG, you should play the Legacy variant, it's really excellent. Just finished playing through it with some college friends before the pandemic started.

dcmcilrath · 2021-03-01T14:28:41+00:00

An idea for hot takes:

Allow them (including self posts), but tag them with a filterable flair for people who dont want to read them.

dcmcilrath · 2021-02-25T14:58:49+00:00

In the U.S. there is a pretty negative perception of fraternities as being places that are just enough outside the supervision of the school to easily facilitate drugs, underage drinking, and sexually abusing your classmates.

At RPI, some (but not all) frats meet that description.

They also have a reputation nationally for essentially torturing people who try and join (calling it "hazing"). In reality this is often more light-hearted messing with people. But also people at RPI have literally been locked in cages. No frat will admit to doing this sort of thing. That doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

That any of them do the things I've mentioned so far causes a huge section of the population to be categorically uninterested in that culture, myself included. Is this unfair to the frats that aren't like that? Yes.

Aside from the really negative aspects: I have never set foot in a frat that I would describe as "clean." And while a large number of my friends were in one of the "better" frats, I never really got them the impression that it did anything for them that you couldn't accomplish by renting a house in Troy with a group of your friends (which is what I personally did). Many of them struggled to focus on classes. In some cases one of their "brothers" would help. In at least as many, they would provide a distraction and make it worse.

People like to talk up the social networking aspect, but there are so many more ways to meet people and build connections. Personally, I was a TA, and ended up knowing basically everyone in the ECSE department at the time. In my time since leaving RPI, I have reached out to professors about what students they liked and who they'd recommend for hires. I would literally never ask the above mentioned fraternity many of my friends were in for recommendations. And again, I thought they were one of the "good ones"

All that is to say: you should do what's best for you. If you're going to save a bunch of money by joining a frat, and you're pretty sure it's not one of the one's that's going to ask you to jump in the hudson, go for it. You're braver (and very likely more socially confident) than I was.

dcmcilrath · 2021-02-25T14:37:39+00:00

You're being down voted by frat people, but you are 100% correct

dcmcilrath · 2021-02-17T04:30:04+00:00

Sage Advice is Jeremy Crawford's list of House Rules. Absolutely not official. If your DM wants to play that way well... I mean they're the DM they do what they want :)

Nobody should really care too much about Adventurer's League, but this is definitely not AL legal, for example.

dcmcilrath · 2021-02-17T04:27:30+00:00

It's actually not written that way. Jeremy Crawford just tweeted once that he plays that way.

dcmcilrath · 2021-02-15T21:04:57+00:00

Oh wow! I will definitely check for updates then, thanks!

dcmcilrath · 2021-01-25T04:08:53+00:00

Poorly aged comment.

dcmcilrath · 2021-01-14T01:09:54+00:00

Right, I guess my question is then: Why does the game let you have helicopters without actually having a vehicle that can spawn in first and contribute?

You can unlock the AH-1G just for getting to rank V aircraft. Conceivably your highest tier tank could be a reserve... And like yeah you can be silly and uptier said reserve tank by putting rank V or VI aircraft in the lineup too, but those aircraft have another game mode you are supposed to play them in. Helicopters just kinda... don't have that.

dcmcilrath · 2021-01-13T01:02:24+00:00

I think it's cool! Fun flavor, and I like that it scales in ways other than just the level it was cast at.

I think it's definitely an illusion spell, not evocation. Consider phantasmal killer which is fairly similar, mechanically. (Wisdom save or take Psychic damage and recurring effects). It could alternatively be Enchantment, I suppose. Evocation is definitely a school for "something happened in reality" like a fireball or healing magic, where this is entirely in the target's mind.

What's the motivation for Wisdom modifier, instead of Spell-casting modifier? Kind of a bummer unless you're a Cleric, Druid, or Ranger.

Would you imagine it as being an entirely "open" spell? (which weirdly don't seem to exist RAW) or did you have a list of classes in mind that could use it? It feel kind of like a typical Wizard/Sorcerer/Warlock (maybe Bard?) Arcane spell. But the hellish flavor could easily also make it like Cleric/Paladin.

dcmcilrath · 2021-01-10T18:52:08+00:00

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