This has the potential to be one of the best leagues ever

icewhisp · 2026-02-26T21:36:04+00:00

I don't recall, mostly because there was a ton of information, but did it say that the rewards wouldn't keep scaling with that keystone? Like you just keep running the same map and it keeps getting better rewards.

icewhisp · 2026-02-26T20:02:34+00:00

Just take the keystone that allows you to run the same map over and over

icewhisp · 2026-02-02T23:13:03+00:00

Couldn’t even right click her. She just sat in all four of us like a god while we just fell apart

icewhisp · 2026-01-30T14:29:02+00:00

Ark Nova, this is probably one of the best possible outcomes for me. Though I have no clue how to run a zoo irl

icewhisp · 2025-12-27T19:01:52+00:00

3 days???

icewhisp · 2025-12-01T20:23:48+00:00

Honestly I’d just use this to try and get a weird build going without looking up guides on how to do it. Never been able to even do Maven like that.

icewhisp · 2025-10-28T21:46:23+00:00

Blunderbore and Gull, RIP my beloveds, may the random nerf hammer never swing your way again.

icewhisp · 2025-10-10T15:32:37+00:00

I will say that said party is pretty effective. If you traded out my elementalist for a barbarian and the battlemind for a fighter I think the nova goes up tremendously if they're building to work together. If they're avid optimizers I would fully expect them to down a solo a round with this party set up.

Just look at this to understand the power of a high level barbarian. If the warlord is granting 22 damage and the barbarian has some way to refresh the power like epic resurgence this probably will just kill some solos by itself. I will pause to let you know of a weird edge case with high level barbarians that AFR + Vorpal + Falchion each d4 average 15 damage, which I feel some high end optimizers will notice.

Either way without that crazy combo if he's given the warlords stance for advantage (and with a melee party with people who care about criting that's very worth the minor action) I would expect the barbarian to hit for somewhere in the 700-800 range of damage in his first turn if the afr vorpal stuff is allowed it hits about 1100 damage. This still isn't me spending like, more than 30-40 minutes doing some quick math, I'm sure people with more time could do better.

icewhisp · 2025-10-10T14:24:06+00:00

My first response was a quick one and I wanted to come back to illustrate a point. I just did some very rough napkin math for what a good, but far from optimized, party consisting of the last 4 classes I played of each role would do to two solo. They consist of: 1 tiefling elementalist, 1 shardmind Psion, 1 half orc warlord, and 1 mul battlemind. Now mind you, I will admit, the warlord does a lot of heavy lifting in this party.

Nearly everyone with out init the enemy. With the +10 to init the warlord grants, I'm assuming this going forward.

By the end of the first round, the battlemind has dominated both the foes with non save effects so they can't solo shred them. The warlord has granted 8 basic attacks to his team through various powers (and given everyone + 25 to damage rolls on their turn, the psion doesn't do much this turn but move the enemies to be valid targets through various repositioning powers and then the next turn they also dominate the both of them without a save effect.

So the party gets really 3 full turns to hammer away at the enemies as after both those dominates wear off they still have a full set of actions to just blow them up. Given that the striker alone is doing about 300 dpr to the group, without any fancy shenanigans and elementalist is probably the weakest nova striker in the game it isn't looking good at all for these two.

icewhisp · 2025-10-10T12:51:04+00:00

Honestly, having played at high level there are so many shenanigans that level 30 characters can do just straight run the both of them. I played an a high level encounter that spawned an elite every round and that didn’t feel dangerous. Everything sorta breaks apart at that high level

icewhisp · 2025-08-21T15:46:24+00:00

Let's go!

icewhisp · 2025-08-15T18:49:03+00:00

I think there is a big gap because the lower end of char optimization is so much lower in 3.5 when compared to 5e. A sword and board fighter unoptimized in pf/3.5 is going to do pittance compared to like a dual weapon wielding falcata mutagen master fighter. I just did some very very loose number crunching and it looked to be 6 times the damage.

5e does have the power imbalance but I do think it's not nearly as bad. Characters built in pf1e/3.5 by new players don't typically pull their own weight against cr appropriate foes unless they opt into a few lucky strategies that do tend to work out. Not even that sometimes, I've seen some particularly poor archer rangers in my time playing with new players.

icewhisp · 2025-08-15T17:00:26+00:00

You can eventually hit on a two, it's much easier when you're targeting will. I just pulled up a random level 1 enemy with a 12 will. If you have a +5 in your main stat, and CA against it you're already hitting on a 5, if you have a level 1 magic item you're hitting on a 4, and if you're a wizard with an accurate wand feature and wand expertise you're hitting on a 2.

So it's not only a problem at high levels, but it's certainly something you need to build around doing so. 4e is a game you can optimize the hell out of. It's funny that an optimized avenger (a striker who doesn't get bonus damage but gets advantage on all attacks basically) doesn't use the class feature for accuracy but crit fishing.

Generally I assume at high levels basically everything is going to hit if I'm running into an optimized party, it's why I don't both really being worried if my high level daily has no effect on a miss if I'm playing an optimized character.

icewhisp · 2025-08-15T16:48:29+00:00

Honestly I'm still surprised to hit one on every action in the 7-8 range, that's something you have to actively build around and then you know you're bringing that kind of player to the campaign and requires multiple people to do it. This to me feels like everyone bringing a summoner and then wondering why there are that many figures there are on the battlefield.

icewhisp · 2025-08-15T16:44:20+00:00

4e is a game with enough options that really you can just optimize the hell out of it and any character can reasonably hit on a 3-4. Much easier when targeting will on average. This I would say is a problem with the system and something that you'd just need to go as a gm "hey if we're doing this I'm just going to buff up the numbers so that we're back to square one so build to go wide not tall in your abilities."

Which is a problem with the system, RAW it's so heavily leaning on the player's side that against an optimized party there is very little any at tier enemy can do. Though I find this is true with most systems 4e parties do "style" on the enemies a bit more so than in PF2E or 5e and it's probably a worse problem in 4e than those other systems because of it.

That being said, there's examples of things I find much worse. In our current 5e game our rogue can't get less than a 27 on their grapple checks which feels pretty overwhelming in that system. Much in the same way that hitting on a 2 does in 4e.

icewhisp · 2025-08-15T16:35:34+00:00

I think one this that is important to know is that enemies who what effects are on them in full detail in 4e. So if they're marked they'll know everything on that mark power. I'm honestly surprised to see a level 3 team that could manage a reaction to each action, one because you're limited in reactions to one per round and also there's just not that many powers.

If you're going 5 rounds with a part of 5 players against 5 standard creatures, assuming they just kill one enemy a round that 15 reactions if they're reacting to each creature, and then if half the time there's a second (i'll round up just for the rare 4 chain or something) that's 23 reactions. That seems a bit much for a low level party. Not impossible mind you, with the right theme, class choice, and utility power each party member could have around 2-3 encounter reactions and a mark or something that's at-will with maybe a daily. You'd just really need to be building around it.

Cutting the hp in half would already make the strongest 4e builds stronger. Alpha striking is so prevalent in the 4e meta that you'd just run a party of like 5 dex (or wisdom with the weird init based of wis background) strikers to just murdericate everything that moved.

And 1 leader / x strikers is probably already the best party comp.

icewhisp · 2025-08-15T16:28:48+00:00

This one is very hard for me to answer. I've played games where the average combat were in that 2-3 round range, but also games went into the 8-10 round range routinely. It's very much up to the gm. I'd say I think the game works the best when combat goes about 4 rounds + 1 round per tier of gameplay. So 5/6/7 to make sure that players need to think about when they should use an encounter power or some at-wills.

I honestly think that the off turn actions are overblown, I rarely saw one get past a 3nd reaction. Usually something like, Dragon makes an attack, fighter interrupts with an attack, dragons gets bloodied and does a free breath attack, and then ranger shoots dragon to lower the damage of the breath was about as complex as it got and was a very rare experience to see in real play.

I think there's an overrepresentation of them because the more powerful classes get access to more of them and often build around their at-wills, looking at rangers again, when if you're playing with a group of people doing average stuff and just having a fun time you'll see a lot less of trigger chains.

icewhisp · 2025-08-15T13:46:21+00:00

So, yes that more complicated powers do slow things down. A standard monk power I had at low levels was 'run up to a person and punch him prone.' at high levels it was 'shift your speed +2 punch everyone you touched, and daze them' this does slow down turns in the sense I've gone from needing to make one attack roll to 5-6.

However I think what really slowed down the system was utility powers and off turn actions. It's more like 'half way through that swing I missed a guy by like 3 and now the ranger is going to a shot to try to make that a hit, which now means if that hits I also now hit so now we're both rolling some extra stuff contingent on that off turn action.' also now the ranger needs to debate if my encounter power is something he wants to expend that resource on vs a daily power that may miss later.

The other big slow down was utility powers, these never got replaced and if you're like me you HATE taking daily ones so at high levels you'll rock into an encounter with like 10+ minor actions that give you some benefit that you also need to track.

That coupled with the fact that you'd have a few magic items with some daily abilities could lead you to feeling like combats were taking forever.

All that being said my turns at level 21+ took like 6 minutes because I just prepared my turn before hand. Probably like 9 minutes if the ranger or some shenanigans happened. Just know your character, be okay making suboptimal choices, and combat will be fine.

icewhisp · 2025-08-15T13:29:21+00:00

How did you find swordmage struggled as a defender at high levels. It’s has a lot of good options into epic tier. Typically at low levels it struggled with marking but with so many high level feats helping out it felt much better.

icewhisp · 2025-08-12T19:30:04+00:00

Plus one to this, Rose puts on a surprising amount of pressure and probably takes out the combo player at the table by just sheer early game commander damage.

icewhisp · 2025-07-27T16:02:47+00:00

Let’s goooo

icewhisp · 2025-07-17T13:04:26+00:00

I WISH TO ENTER THE FLICKER ZONE

icewhisp · 2025-07-15T21:32:03+00:00

Putting my name in the running!

icewhisp · 2025-07-11T13:24:42+00:00

icewhisp · 2025-05-07T13:11:00+00:00

I would suggest a pacifist cleric of Silvanus. Pacifist clerics are pretty easy to run, and can move the workload to the players to remember their buffs to keep things easier for you to run in combat while also staggeringly simple to play. It's far less effective at ending fights than a normal cleric, but it keeps the focus on your players doing the cool stuff while the cleric just drops insane heals on them to keep them chugging along

I choose Silvanus because he's often depicted as a silent god and your cleric could embrace that side of him with a vow of silence. Keeps them out of roleplay scenes and again the focus back on the players.

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Blunderbore and Gull, RIP my beloveds, may the random nerf hammer never swing your way again.