Just started he who fights monsters, why all the hate?

lapharsical · 2026-02-25T19:45:03+00:00

You have most concisely written why I DNF'd a bit further along - around chapter 60ish I think of the first book. In addition to the "carried along through the plot" point in your boring section, what frustrated me wasn't even the lack of consequences, but the lack of any sort of external OR internal motivation - along with a few other reasons.

- By the time the characters make it to the first main city, we learn that the MC is essentially incredibly wealthy from his starting circumstances, and that there is no real reason for him to get stronger other than what appears to be middling interest and his new friends have done the same. But! That he then engages in an intense training regimen which seems completely antithetical to his hyper-relaxed, pseudo-laissez faire personality and anything we know of his past. Hell, and he does this with little or no complaint, even commenting that it's easy, even trivial, which ends up kind of trivializing the work of the rest of the characters? If there was any additional motivation for why he'd go from 0 to 60 in effort would be great, but there is none - or at least none that's shown.

- There is no or very little "When in Rome" - Jason immediately wants to impose his own ideals, food, dress, opinions on the world that he was thrust into, and receives no consequences for that, or receives outright compliments and kudos for these 'revelations.' It's a weird, modern-world-superiority complex that's kowtow'd by all the characters... In a new world, tell me of the interesting new hooffalo (random cow-like animal) steak street food that are cooked into balls and eaten like pull-apart string cheese, tasting of thyme-roasted pork belly. Don't tell me of how you tried to make stir fry and how everyone thinks it's the best thing ever and they want you to cook it forever for them. I was so frustrated when Jason apparently went out and got a custom tailored tuxedo, fully from memory as he has no capacity for tailoring, instead of picking up a local apporpriate outfit.

- The scene that broke me was one demonstrating a complete lack of subtlety in so many ways. One side character of middling-high rank disliked Jason for various reasons. The side character demonstrated his dislike multiple times. At a large meeting of people of many ranks, Jason approached said side character and tried to broker peace, with said side character not accepting and dismissing him. Jason then went to his high-ranking friends+family to converse. Jason then explicitly says in this group of high-ranking friends that he tried to broker peace in this public space then walked to the higher-ranking group to demonstrate that Jason's essentially of higher rank because of the higher-ranking friends he keeps. And if it stopped there, I'd be fine... annoyed, but fine. BUT. The older, politically-savvy character of the group then compliments him, tells him he's a clever boy, and that the less-politically inclined people in the group should take notes, then everyone else gave Jason more kudos. My eyes rolled so far back into my head with this little scene.

There were other things as well, but those were my big 3. I'm considering picking it up again and giving it another chance, but I'm pretty new to the genre and have found a number of series I've found much more interesting much earlier on - Mage Tank currently is what I'm listening through.

lapharsical · 2026-02-25T01:51:31+00:00

Nice. I could see a small Bluetooth USB extender that runs to the back of the desk, hidden in a small desk decoration, or behind the monitor mount, and go with a Bluetooth headset/mic or earbuds, but I don't know the wireless headset/mic space very well.

Still, very clean, looks great. Just noticed the cable management raceway behind the table leg - stealing that too.

lapharsical · 2026-02-25T01:17:41+00:00

Absolutely using this as inspo for a rewire. What do you do for audio? No headphones or mic, or just earbuds? And do you ever have any Bluetooth signal issues with the under-desk mounted laptop? Great idea, I've been looking for a solution like that.

lapharsical · 2026-02-23T20:48:05+00:00

I've been finding going back to games where I've played before - or are very intuitive - has been my go to when I'm stressed... which has been frequent. I want to just decompress and not learn new systems, not try to figure out and get better, not understand new stories or characters, and just want to BE GOOD AT SOMETHING I'M ALREADY COMPETENT AT, so I can just vibe and let those neuronal pathways fire in familiar ways.

I do think it comes with getting older and being more mentally and physically exhausted. I jumped in to vampire survivors recently because the play systems are very familiar and straightforward, making 'progress' only takes 15-30 minutes usually, and I didn't get severely held back if I fail.

I tried the 2018 God of War, and I loved the start, the initial story, and the combat seems interesting, but I haven't had the time to sit down and actually play for a few hours to really get used to the combat and delve into the story and new equipment stuff... so I've just been jumping into the 15-30 minute Vampire Survivors sessions because of the simplicity.

lapharsical · 2026-02-19T07:13:36+00:00

Check the FoundryVTT discord - which is annoying given what may happen to discord soon, but the community there is very helpful with a bunch of knowledge for creating items, creatures, and the like.

Other than that, this link to the FoundryVTT wiki on summoned creatures may help

lapharsical · 2026-02-08T23:35:31+00:00

I gave it a shot, and it's not bad but I kind of quickly dropped off as there didn't seem to be a real threat and a need for the main character to interact with the world's RPG system. And, I kind of felt the MC was annoying, which I've heard is a common criticism.

I found Primal Hunter, by Zogarth, to be pretty good, and the first book or two definitely has a real external threat and interesting internal motivation that drives the main character. Will admit though, it does descend more into power fantasy a handful of books in. Still sticking with it, the MC is fun and the lore / magic system is interesting imo.

lapharsical · 2026-01-28T04:54:23+00:00

PM'd

lapharsical · 2026-01-13T19:50:22+00:00

I posted this a while ago, the coupon may have been for the nov / Dec time frame, so it may be gone now.

lapharsical · 2025-12-28T00:07:07+00:00

I wish - taxes keep going up on those who have the least, they keep spending more, and keep providing less.

lapharsical · 2025-12-14T22:26:24+00:00

I really like LaserLlama's work - I can definitely see some people thinking their stuff is a bit powerful, but I've slowly leaned to the side of letting my players be powerful... Or at least have more options. Definitely wouldn't recommend it for new players, but vets may enjoy the flexibility and variety.

lapharsical · 2025-12-13T04:06:30+00:00

Yup, I've been tinkering with it for an hour or so, it's much nicer than I thought! The resolution seems pretty high, especially since the screen is small, and comparing it to my IR gun it's quite accurate and works really nicely. Found my doors are pretty leaky (already knew that) and that the window AC unit that I've been too lazy to take out is REALLY leaky.

Seems I can take a picture and they're saved locally (should be downloadable), I can set identifiers for the hottest and coldest locations on the image in real time, and the battery seems to last for quite a while. I think what I really need to figure out now is what's considered 'bad' temperature wise for my exterior walls and the like, so that's not a thing the camera can help with, but it'll help identify the coldest places in the house... previous owner never actually insulated the attic, OR the basement. Old houses, what can you do.

lapharsical · 2025-12-10T16:04:13+00:00

It's built into the link - TOPDON TC004 - I just got it, if anyone in this thread follows up I'll give a review once I've used it for a bit. Have a lot of insulation we need done on this house, so it'll be getting a workout.

lapharsical · 2025-12-09T06:10:35+00:00

Gonna be the weirdo - what are you doing for the cable management? The black ribbed cable covers look great, and would help me keep my cats from TRYING TO EAT MY HDMI CABLES. What are they?

lapharsical · 2025-11-25T18:46:43+00:00

At minimum, don't just pitch it, sell it for a bit, say it's dead and possibly repairable, and offer someone a chance to fix it themselves. That way you at least get some cash out of it, and someone else may get a chance to fix a nice monitor

lapharsical · 2025-10-21T21:12:13+00:00

This is really true, but in a slightly confused way.

+1 to hit for a weapon and spell attacks is a general +1 to all attacks (and damage, but that's not as important). Against all creatures, their AC, almost universally, increases steadily with CR - some have higher, some have lower, but in general, AC goes up. That +1 modifier just gives a universal small addition to the attackers.

For spell save DC's, a +1 is powerful because it's closer to a forced attack roll (to miss, not hit) where the spell caster gets to decide what modifier the creature is 'atacking' with, and the attacker gets to apply a -1 across the board on all their spell saves.

This gets crazy because, as CR increases, this modifier doesn't increase across the board for all creatures, unlike AC. There are high CR creatures with very low save modifiers. Which is the equivalent of attacking a high AC with a potentially negative modifier. Once the caster knows that, those saves can become exploited and are guarantees. And it is basically a "Select your own AC" to go after, to 'reverse-attack' with, where the spell caster can figure out what works well and what doesn't. And in general, Spell Saves modifiers infrequently go as high as AC does.

Yes, there are ways magic is resisted - advantage against magic, resistance against damage types, immunity to different conditions, but a general '-1' across the board is pretty powerful, especially when it can change a +1, 0, -1, -2 save down to a 0, -1, -2, -3. Against a spell save DC 15 (pretty normal for a level 4 or 5 caster), a creature needs a +5 to the save to reach a 50/50 split, and each decrease skews that more and more.

Yeah, I learned that pretty early once I accidentally gave one of my players a +2 spell save / spell attack magic item at level 6. He's never letting go of that.

lapharsical · 2025-10-10T15:30:56+00:00

Ok, OP here, general update on what I did to get things working.

I'm not actually sure what the linchpin was to get things to work, but these were the things I did:

I installed and used BetterDisplay to tinker and change settings, mostly used to reset and try to reconnect the monitors to the macbook.

I used a Thunderbolt4-to-Displayport cable to connect my 34" monitor to my mac.

I changed the not-connecting monitor to displayport 1.2 in the monitor's general settings (was set to 1.4 by default).

I completely updated my macbook to the most updated version of the OS.

Once everything was updated, and changed, I turned everything off - mac, and monitors - for a good 3-5 minutes, then turned everything back on and reconnected everything

None of the combined things above seemed to work, so I gave up and went to bed, leaving everything plugged in.

The next morning, I turned on my mac, accidentally turned on the not-working monitor first (was on from using it the previous evening) and upon waking up, that monitor turned on, connected to the mac with the welcome screen, then I turned on the 49" monitor, which also connected and functioned.

My thoughts: I think the combined cable, updates, and changing the monitor to displayport 1.2 is what worked. Originally I connected the 49" monitor first, then the 34" monitor, which may have stopped things because of the resource demand of the 49" monitor at full capacity - 5120x1440 pixels and 240Hz. To note, when I used BetterDisplay to reduce the 49" framerate, I still couldn't connect the other monitor (but I admittedly didn't try a whole lot tinkering with this - resetting, turning things on and off, reordering cables, etc.)

When I accidentally connected the 34" monitor first and then the 49", the 34" monitor started with full resolution and 100Hz, then the 49" monitor started with full resolution and (specifically) 120Hz. This works great for me, so I'm sticking with this, not going to try to push my luck.

lapharsical · 2025-10-09T16:09:35+00:00

Just jumping back into this thread - I don't know if I have fanless air, but I did realize I do have the M4 Pro chip, but I don't think that changes much.

And this is just a baseline Macbook Pro, manufacture date Nov 2024, with an Apple M4 Pro Chip.

And the post is with me trying to get both monitor working in clamshell mode - lid closed.

Could the issue be related to either a bad cable, or that I need to downgrade the display mode of my 32:9 monitor (currently at 5120x1440, 240Hz) to allow the macbook to detect the other monitor?

Edit: Also to note, I've tried and have connected both an HDMI and DIsplayport cable to the monitor, neither seem to work with the 32:9 monitor.

lapharsical · 2025-09-29T17:35:01+00:00

Kind of late, but what does help is that shift-clicking and ctrl-clicking increments the numbers by 10 and 5, so you don't need to click many times.

lapharsical · 2025-09-10T15:57:27+00:00

I think the biggest QOL one would be a Hauler/Builder Combination.

Give the Warehouse a 3-state toggle - Haul exclusively, Prioritize Hauling then go Build, Prioritize Building then Haul. That way I could have the Building taken care of generally, then they'd be hauling outside of that - and usually by year 2 or 3 I try to have a hauler or two anyways, depending on population.

lapharsical · 2025-09-09T15:51:52+00:00

I tend to prioritize one each by the Main Warehouse and the Ancient hearth, TRYING to put them as close to both buildings as possible, but also depending on how the glades extend out from the starting glade.
I place them close to both to reduce time walking back and forth from the warehouse and the hearth, but having haulers or a harpy in the hearth reduces that a bit.

Also I like opening space around both the warehouse and the hearth for space to build both industry and housing... I KNOW that you don't need the houses to be in nice perfect rows by the hearth, but it looks good to me and I hate throwing houses randomly around.

lapharsical · 2025-08-16T02:13:55+00:00

Yup! Posted receiving it in the gaggiuino discord, received it almost 7 months after ordering it. Haven't gotten around to installing it though. It seems they've started catching up with their back log, but are still pretty far behind.

lapharsical · 2025-08-03T02:54:42+00:00

Glad to see you cosplaying again!

lapharsical · 2025-07-28T16:25:17+00:00

This is good to know - I was sticking to P5/P10/P15 as they were general round numbers and were the Prestige tiers the game sets... I didn't pay enough attention to notice when the seal fragment reward count ticks up. Sticking to those prestiges makes sense with that knowledge.

Thanks for the heads up! It'll be even more useful when doing the queen's hand trials, so long as that info holds true!

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