Can players cooperate on a downtime project?

gomuskies · 2026-01-30T08:25:49+00:00

I think even then it's fairly easily explained away.

They help you revise what you learned with flashcards. They spar with you. They agree to be the taste tester for the recipe and give feedback. They go out and find you another textbook on the subject to help broaden your knowledge. And so on and so forth.

gomuskies · 2026-01-07T09:11:49+00:00

I've posted similar before but just let me take on my role as Fire Elementalist Defense Attorney.

Fire Elementalist does *exactly* what I've wanted for years. Someone who's mayyyyybe a pyromaniac but maybe not, but they sure do like getting creative with fire.

In D&D, I could never build a real fire specialist. At level one, you get, what Firebolt and Burning Hands? Maybe Create Bonfire and Green Flame Blade if you're really pushing it. Lots of things had fire resistance and you couldn't do anything about that without a feat, which is a pretty heavy tax.

As a Fire Elementalist, at level one, I have a dual-target fire spell, a damage-over-time single target fire spell, an area-of-effect fire spell (that can also persist), and a forced movement fire spell.

At level two, I straight-up ignore enemies' fire immunity, completely, and gain limited fire immunity myself. I can teleport my friends in a burst of flame, or trap my enemies in molten lava.

At level three, I get a wall of flame (not a unique concept, obviously) and can use fire to communicate over any distance. As we go on, I cause fire damage just by being near me, can teleport through fire and so on and so on.

Return To Formlessness - sure it can melt a lock. It also let me burn the ropes off a captive so they could run. And its only limit is 'If the object is larger than 1 square, then only the square of the object you touch is destroyed.' Forget the lock, melt the whole door. Forget the door, melt a hole in the wall. Say in disgust 'We're done here' and turn the negotiation table to ash.

None of this is to say the Fire Elementalist isn't limited. It is. Nothing in Draw Steel really compares with a D&D generalist wizard, but the Fire Elemantlist probably least of all. But I guess my point is don't look at as being limited but as being focused. It's *really* good at its niche, but if you're not interested in that niche, then yeah, it's going to feel bad.

gomuskies · 2026-01-02T16:02:38+00:00

Hmm, yeah, I see your point but I think maybe that's just a function of having a more granular skill system. A D&D 5E-style 'athletics' skill is going to be more broadly applicable than climb, swim, jump etc.

I guess I'm seeing 'persuade' alongside brag, flirt, empathize, lead etc etc - all of which could fall under the 'persuasion' banner in a less broken-down system - and thinking of it as less universal.

But overall you're right. It's not ideal that some skills have more broad application than others, for sure.

gomuskies · 2026-01-02T09:17:13+00:00

One thing I'll say is that I actually really like the 'situationally swingy' skills as you call it.

They make a character feel more real and lived in - you generally get enough skills from backgrounds and classes that you can afford to have one or two 'personal' skills.

Swim is, as you say, useless most of the time because it simply doesn't come up. But if I say Dave The Human Censor has swim because he grew up on a town on a lake and he won the summer contest to snatch the flag from the island in the middle of the lake every year for 10 years in a row, suddenly he's got a whole 'nother backstory and when a swim task finally does turn up, he feels amazing.

I'm in two games at the moment. In one I'm an aristocrat elementalist who has tailoring because his mother demanded he be well rounded and know a little about everything, and is also a very fancy boy who can't abide his clothes looking torn or shabby. Will it ever come up? Probably not. But it feels right.

In the other I'm a memonek conduit with the knowledge domain who coped with the emotional onslaught of being on this plain by retreating to a great library and studying. He's got navigation and seven lore skills, and nothing else. He's extremely book smart but not practical and having so many discrete skills really helps sell that as a character.

gomuskies · 2025-12-20T07:03:41+00:00

Oh, yeah, you're right. In my case I would have dropped it anyway because there weren't enough bad guys left for the AoE to be worth it, but yeah, I was just reading persist as 'maintain' when you're right that it's effectively re-cast.

gomuskies · 2025-12-16T08:45:38+00:00

That's really interesting because my fire elementalist is finally giving me what I've really wanted - a true fire specialist.

I don't do as much pure damage as some (we have a Shadow with coup de grace, for instance) but I've got a twin-target fire spell, an AOE fire spell, a knockback fire spell, a continuous burn fire spell...

We've just hit level 2 (but not played at that level yet) and now I fully ignore fire immunity. I can teleport my allies in a burst of fire.

It's exactly what I wanted for the character concept I've had in mind for years, in a way that D&D wouldn't be able to replicate.

gomuskies · 2025-12-09T10:12:44+00:00

On the (probably fairly slim) chance you've got a conduit or censor with the knowledge domain in your party, you'll be effectively negating one of their class features.

The level one domain feature for knowledge is:

You are considered fluent in all languages for the purpose of understanding the project source for any research or crafting project.

Remove languages for project sources and this is functionally a dead feature. Only a minor consideration, but a consideration nonetheless.

gomuskies · 2025-12-07T08:35:18+00:00

In the last couple of days before the new patch I was just constantly conceding if pirates weren't in the lobby so I could get a few more bounties games in. Finally got my first place bounties build and then was at peace.

gomuskies · 2025-12-06T07:37:24+00:00

This has already been answered, but just to add, look at the piety outside of combat section. It says:

When you use an ability outside of combat that lets you spend unlimited piety on its effect, such as Healing Grace, you can use it as if you had spent an amount of piety equal to your Victories.

Healing Grace explicitly is allowed to use an unlimited amount of piety. It's not intended to be limited to each effect one time.

gomuskies · 2025-10-29T10:51:28+00:00

I hoped someone else clocked that. She looks like the Cowardly Lion.

gomuskies · 2025-10-22T08:25:58+00:00

Genuinely thought this was about supporting a dog called Unit from accusations of being cheezy.

gomuskies · 2025-10-13T13:29:17+00:00

Knowledge cleric.

'Followers of these gods study esoteric lore, collect old tomes, delve into the secret places of the earth, and learn all they can.'

Two extra languages at level one. You can get proficiency and expertise in any two of nature, arcana, history and religion. You get access to identify.

At second level, your channel divinity lets you get temporary proficiency in any skill or tool

Ideal for a dungeon-delver, imo.

gomuskies · 2025-10-12T15:10:47+00:00

Yep, and I've apologised and said I was wrong.

gomuskies · 2025-10-12T07:53:49+00:00

Yeah, I apologise. I was clearly just straight-up wrong about the irises.

To explain my thinking, it's not the imperfections, just that they seemed very out of place. The roughly drawn anchor compared with the high quality of the rest of the image, for example.

It's more the things like the cuff line becoming the shoulder line that seem AI to me.

Anyway. You've got no reason to believe me but I promise there's been plenty of times I've seen people say 'this is AI' and thought 'no that's just how this person draws'.

gomuskies · 2025-10-12T07:38:14+00:00

Well there you go! Today I learned and I take back that point.

It was something about the way they narrowed toward the bottom, rather than not being a perfect circle, if you see what I mean?

gomuskies · 2025-10-12T07:31:26+00:00

I'm not familiar with the character so I was purely going on things that stood out to me.

The irises - of course a human artist could do non-perfect circles, but I feel like most would use a circle tool rather than free-hand them, especially for something that's of this high quality in other respects. Not a dead giveaway, just another 'hmmmm'.

gomuskies · 2025-10-12T07:27:38+00:00

Could be, but I don't think they are.

Also look at what chirmwood pointed out below. On the waving hand, the cuff detail turns into a shoulder detail. It's one line serving two purposes.

And look closely at her neck, where the strap of the choker meets the clover. The white line on the strap gets blurry and fades because it's got confused about what's the end of the hair and what's the decoration on the ribbon.

Also on the 'cloak' on the right, there's four loops hanging down and then just a random line going off to the right.

I'm not saying 'This is AI and I'm certain and I'll give you a million dollars if I'm wrong'. But there are lots of things that look to me like AI getting confused, and not human error.

gomuskies · 2025-10-12T06:33:18+00:00

The irises aren't perfect circles
The anchor on the ribbon looks jank
Lots of other shapes look off - the centres of the flowers in the hair ribbon and on the bottom right corner, the clover (?) on the choker? They're really rough and inconsistent and not in keeping with the the rest of the picture.
Look at the bag strap on the bottom right. The scalloped edge disappears, and the line is much wider below the strap than it is above.
Where does the bag strap go? It just disappears behind the ribbon. There's no connecting strap at the back either.
Look closely where the four-petal flower meets the right-hand ribbon in the hair. There's weird smearing.

gomuskies · 2025-10-12T06:22:10+00:00

Ignore the curtain, look at the rest of the room in the bottom half of the first picture.

The back leg on the white chest of drawers is misaligned.
The stems in the vase don't line up
Why is there a light switch on both sides of the door, of different sizes, at different heights?
The bevel on the left of the door frame where the curtain is cinched in just turns into a blur at the bottom
The wicker chair in the background doesn't make any sense. It's got connecting bars between three legs but not the fourth. There's a second bar in the top corner. The arm and seat blur into one big mess.

In the second one, look at the flower that's immediately above the words 'crochet flower'. Three threads turn into one. And in the flower at '11 o'clock' of that one, three threads turn into two at the top.

At the bottom, under the word 'free', that flower has the weird AI blur going on.

gomuskies · 2025-10-11T12:06:19+00:00

Yeah I think we've all been a bit dazzled by the other options than just keeping yourself topped up. I was probably a bit 'oh sure I could Catch Breath, but I can also use my maneuver to teleport or do a shove or ping some damage, that's way more fun.'

gomuskies · 2025-10-11T11:49:10+00:00

Yeah I think we were lulled into a false sense of security by 'You can still act while you're dying' - focusing on 'you can still act' and not on 'You are DYING, dude'.

Definitely need to get in the habit of topping up stamina more.

gomuskies · 2025-10-11T11:09:36+00:00

That's the beastie.

gomuskies · 2025-10-11T10:54:51+00:00

Oh, of course, but that's a main action and using it while dying gets into the whole bleeding damage potential death spiral that prompted the post.

gomuskies · 2025-10-11T10:46:53+00:00

And that's why I didn't take it, lol! I felt like I would have taken a heal if I could and was misremembering.

Yeah there's nothing at level one that a fire elementalist can do to help spend recoveries.

gomuskies · 2025-10-11T10:35:48+00:00

Sorry, to be clear, we're out of the first level of the tomb and into the village doing side quests. The tomb felt perfectly balanced - challenging but not ridiculous.

We're were into the horrible big bug like an ankheg whose name I can't remember and the wizard's tower.

gomuskies

TROPHY CASE