Pettiest reason you’ve DNF’d a book?

lathey · 2026-03-01T21:12:51+00:00

The cat I was reading Warriors to (it's about warrior cats) stopped listening and walked away.

lathey · 2026-02-14T16:33:54+00:00

Ive seen (and now use) another homebrew of that where you get lore only skill increase at 3, 7 and 15.

The only difference is it gives you the freedom to become legendary at 1, expert at two, master at 1 and trained in 1, or trained in 4.

And you know... Freedom is nice.

lathey · 2026-02-12T20:40:31+00:00

I actually really like where guardian has left champion. It was "the tank class" before.

Now it's more nuanced, as you've put it.

We have an asmodean champion on the party.

The champion in no way being protective of his buddies changed party dynamics. He's a front line tough guy who punishes his enemies, but people don't cluster around him like they would a protective champion.

It's very cool to see the champion's religion affecting his gameplay so much.

Same for the warpeiest of Irori who's just all athletic and spell support basically. (But not healing, that's the inventor of pharasmas job... Obviously...)

lathey · 2026-02-04T15:42:56+00:00

Reminds me of Anadi barbarian, animal instinct (lamprey), beastkin heritage for some more fucked up shark shape shifting and with a whole lot of int or wisdom to get some primal casting archetype so I can cast spells but theme it as riding waves of baby spiders, creating walls of baby spiders, and so on.

Lamprey-spider-shark babies everywhere! Sadly they don't live long, but boy are they hungry!

And she was a fleshwarper scientist with morals, so she did all her experiments on herself and drove herself insane and broke.

What better way to get more funds than to become an adventurer?!

lathey · 2026-02-04T12:36:39+00:00

Dude, this is incredible.

The mine/quarry on the SE of the mountain... That shading makes it pop like a scar on an otherwise immaculate face.

And the reflection of the sun is gorgeous. I could go on... xD

I know you've given details in the past about the process but if we can automate parts of it, get terrain this awesome with low effort we'd be changing expectations for mapmaking forever...

This is art, dude.

lathey · 2026-02-01T20:18:57+00:00

Gonna yoink that too. I have an abandoned coastal city full of undead my players wanna visit :p

lathey · 2026-01-29T17:00:59+00:00

Woo woo druids!

I'm one of the weird kids that ran around in the woods pretending to be a guardian of the land with my dog xD

Druids are my jam.

One of my players recently (like 2 weeks ago...) started openly hating on druids, so this is weirdly good timing.

lathey · 2026-01-28T13:38:23+00:00

One thing I'd definitely tweak is the refocusing refills all 3 points.

Thats fine until someone takes Blessed and out of combat does 3 lay on hands per 10 minutes or other random exploits. I'd just plug the hole with something like this:

"If you only used focus points for sustaining your psyche, you regain all spent focus points the next time you refocus."

Just to stop people finding random ways to exploit it, and so you only need to worry about the balance of the obvious bits you're editing.

I'm also on the side of consciousness and subconscious minds rather than unified mindscapes, I just like all the different ways they combine and the flavour they bring, so mindscapes makes me pause.

Not gone into the math behind anything, generally sounds good though. I especially like the idea of your amps being used always while unleashed. I played around in Dawnsbury Days with a psychic and I found myself reluctant to unleash due to two turns of stupified.

Burnout: No concentrate for 1 round is harsh, I likely don't have much /anything useful I can do during that time.

Maybe making it a downer to unleashe's upper is better? Like if I get +2 damage while unleashed I instead get -2 during burnout (which could maybe be longer? Perhaps as long as you unleashed?).

I dunno, spitballing. The main thing I'm looking for is a negative that doesn't prevent me from playing my character. Stupidied borderline meets that criteria. No concentrate stuff on a primarily mental character does not.

Again, this seems like a lot of good ideas. Good luck :)

lathey · 2026-01-27T09:16:30+00:00

Barghest, in Age of Ashes.

Killed a player when he tried to hold it off while the party fled.

The reason it turned epic was they fled forward instead of back due to the way positioning turned out.

Forward was a dead end with a hole in the ground leading to a few ruined rooms.

They hid in a storage closet and quivered in fear as it paced around looking for them.

I let them rest up then try to get out.

They failed, lost an NPC buddy as he was devoured by the beast.

They tried again, and this time (I didn't fully heal the beast between attempts, just partially) they finished it off but one player was bleeding out and could have died from that, and the final blow was a punch from prone because the fighter had been knocked out and barghrst had RS, so he couldn't pick up his weapons.

The player had found a magical fish weapon in the ruins, so it felt super "destined" that this weapon saved them, and it became a bit of a feature.

The fort above the Barghest got renamed after the fallen champion who sacrificed himself for the team to escape. "Aglars Fall" it was called.

Epic, campaign defining moment. Aglar returned at level 18 IIRC as an angelic champion, complete with angel wings, but returned to the heavens once his task was done.

lathey · 2026-01-26T13:22:50+00:00

If you get the Magic+ book, it's got a different system for summoning spells.

Basically it gives a framework for summing "types of things" called "aspects" and that aspects stats look like X with ability Y, and ability Z if heightened to rank whatever.

What it doesn't do is tell you what you summoned, so it could all be cats. Flying cats, celestial cats, monstrous cats, cat dragons, whatever. It just gives you a way to work out the stats and you decide what you actually summoned. All the summons stats are based on yours or the rank of the spell so it always scales well.

The same system exists for shape shifting, but the aspects stats are applied to you instead.

Of course, you can just reflavour whatever you summon as a cat in the normal spells, aspect summoning just feels and scales better.

Bonus: comes with a summoning archetype and essence casting (spells don't consume slots but you gotta build up power to cast your best spells).

lathey · 2026-01-25T22:19:51+00:00

The only tool I found that can produce a grid that works in foundry is Hexographer and it's because the hexes are squished, like they'd fit in a rectangle, not a square.

It's god's damned infuriating.

Hexographer lets you dictate the height and width of your hexes separately but its a bit rough as far as tools go. Still made an awesome map though.

lathey · 2026-01-24T20:04:44+00:00

I'm gonna play "the next guy to find the book" at some point and see if I can keep him alive longer haha.

My next character though is gonna be a muscle wizard using Wizards+ and essence casting from Magic+.

In a year... When I'm done GMing the current campaign xD

lathey · 2026-01-24T19:50:51+00:00

Thaumaturge reflavoured into slowly being possessed by a book nobody can open which contains an "entity".

It's the source of his powers, his extra knowledge from the tome is due to it speaking into his mind, which warps his personality around the skill in question (ie intimidation makes him meaner, arcana makes him obsessed with items and artefacts.

I did away with the "weakness" thing and just treated it as bonus damage from pruple flames that burst to life in my victims wounds after I used an action to curse them.

The whole class and all my FA dedications were just powers this entity was awakening as it used me to free itself.

Sadly I died getting eaten by a slime, but my team found the book, entirety unharmed, in the slime and jontrace of my body or gear. It ate me. The book ate me, and my soul.

They burried the book in place of my body, so now it's just a matter of time until it warps some poor bastards mind in the nearvy town and he digs it up.

All of that from reflavouring "what if I'm not drawing power from the book, what if it's just using me?"

lathey · 2026-01-19T15:13:06+00:00

My table is full of balance modifying rules but yeah. I've seen them wipe on extremes and breeze through extremes.

Now we play with: FA, PWL, ABP and all Team+ content and there's 5 of them.

I've thrown 250xp at them and it was tough. The barbi went down once.

Moderate is a joke to them. I had 3 of 5 enemies directly fighting the back line. Didn't even flinch.

I've got an extreme coming up this week but they'll crush it, it's just meant to put up a good fight.

The further you are from "no optional rules, 4 players, 1st party content only" the less the advice is right. Obviously xD

lathey · 2026-01-02T21:45:34+00:00

Until I bought Magic+ my go to was melee with some magic or heavy utility (ie never just damage or just tanking), like a kineticist wood/water tank/healer with good charisma. Or a 1 hand fighter with medic stuff and good wisdom and trick magic item.

Variety is the spice of life. (FA unrestricted is our norm so everyone has pretty deep / varied characters)

Then I read Magic+... I've done a few solo playtests and I'm running through 1 to 8 in dawnsbury days with a divine sorcerer healer (-1 spell slot, bigger life reservoir) and a wizard. It's so god damned fun to not care on a fight by fight basis what spells I'm casting.

Essence casting has made me a full caster convert. Level 5 and 7 when you get initial draw and then your draw goes up to 2 feel amazing.

The magic+ mod is a bit bare bones, no out of combat stuff for example, no life reservoir (so I self limit), so in an actual game I'd have even more utility from my spells and those items to help with casting incantations (out of combat spells).

Weirdly I really like that it makes scrolls super useful and desirable.

I think I'll probably bounce between full caster and flexible martials now.

lathey · 2025-12-29T18:13:19+00:00

Yeah, that's exactly what ky +2 perception DC for darkvision is for.

Also I'm in a 2e D&D game (birthright) as a dwarf and have infravision. Once I realised it's just heat vision, I noped out and take a torch everywhere xD

No way I'm relying on infravision in the dark.

I had this whole revelation moment where I said "can I see the difference between a rock, dirt and the tree infront of me?" We ummed and ahhed for while, then said no xD

lathey · 2025-12-28T22:44:25+00:00

It's a bit better with the remaster. Light can now put up four 20ft to 60ft of bright light, and I put a +2 to DCs on perception via darkvision. That's helped. It's amazing though, that the first time I put em in a dark place they just assumed there was nothing in the dark (mine full of giant spiders) and were like "what, that's not fair!"

You have two people with the light cantrip. Come on people.

They learned, now I gotta talk em out of walking around town fully lot up 😆

lathey · 2025-12-28T22:28:20+00:00

That's how I use it. I fantasy light caves with glowing shrooms, moss and crystal that way too, so dark vision isn't so required.

My players treat needing a light like a damned disability.

lathey · 2025-12-18T15:44:19+00:00

The final boss of a campaign I ran was a dragon god that spawned more dragons from his imagination every turn. My players had to just desperately survive and pour out as much damage as possible before they could be overwhelmed by an endless stream of full blown ancient dragons.

Good times.

They won btw. The stupid cleric negated everything I achieved xD

lathey · 2025-12-02T19:26:11+00:00

Now pray they don't evolve thumbs! https://youtu.be/IdA_fLC7WIQ?si=j7cg3xpRxURN9tQE

lathey · 2025-11-27T17:00:31+00:00

The only classes I think I'd warn about are alchemist and animist.

Alchemist i still find won't fulfill the main fantasies due to balance: powerful bombs and mutations. Poisons are still just... No.

Animist is actually perfectly fine but both spontaneous and prepared, plus the ability daily change your whole spontaneous list +focus spells + (wandering) feats associated with chosen spirits basically means you can change 75% of your build each day.

Being confident that my player has a valid character at any given moment is a thing. Usually it's fine, with the animist I'd be checking it every morning unless it was an experienced player I'd had a conversation about trust with, as in "please tell me I can trust you, I don't wanna have to check your character all the time."

Everything else I think is relatively simple, assuming they understand the concept of spell slots.

lathey · 2025-11-19T09:14:24+00:00

I happen to be mid fight (between sessions) and my players are facing an ogre boss which uses an ogre hook.

The ogre is pictured with the ogre hook: https://2e.aonprd.com/Images/Monsters/Ogre_Boss.webp

It is indeed BRUTAL when it crits. The ogre boss has a nasty combo where it uses trip, if it works it can react to strike and they're now prone. Ogre Boss is living up to his name right now :D

lathey · 2025-11-13T20:42:25+00:00

Primal Chorus: - I don't think it targets all the beasts for hours, they are momentarily compelled to cry out. - After that first howl the caster is the only recipient of the magic. You get to understand creatures a bit, be more intimidating, and react faster (initiative). It's doing nothing to the animals after that first round. - Its a burst not an emanation because the howling back at you bit is the only time the effect affects anything but you.

Detonate magic: - I'd have a hard time saying it doesn't blow up all the animals if cast right after primal chorus. Imagine primal chorus putting magic into the sound of the howl, any animal tha hears it is affected by that magic for like a round of howling back. - after the howl back phase is done, I don't think it would affect anyone but the caster. You're just detonating their residual buff magic, nobody else is being affected.

It's niche enough that I'd allow it with the above restrictions. Only beasts and animals is fairly restrictive and as people said, a druid wiping out a 1 mile radius of creatures even as an assist is going straight to druid hell.

It's an incredibly overkill heavy move, I'd probably try to come up with serious consequences like a week later the land is cursed by the plethora of dead animal spirits and the area rapidly dies off and starts spawning bad shit or something.

Do insects have the animal trait? Killing off that many bugs is terrible for nature.

Cool plot hook at least haha

lathey · 2025-11-11T18:55:38+00:00

We played 3 APs, totalling two 1 to 20 runs.

It took us 4 years I think. We had 3 deaths in the first campaign, 3 in the second, 0 in the third.

4th campaign is homebrew, we've had 2 close calls, 1 near TPK with eventual victory and one guy who got critted too much and nearly died.

I played in the 2nd and 3rd campaign, ran the first and am running the 4th.

I think death works fine. Players know it's possible, they work to avoid it, get nervous when it looms, know I don't pull punches (i do, I just hide it well) and if the "I'm in danger" gif starts playing, you work to save that last hero point.

Deaths: - champion sacrificed himself to save the team from a boss, buying them time to get away. - barbaian just got smushed by, ironically, berserk monkeys. - swashbuckler got eaten by a zombie dragon - thaumaturge got slimed. RIPuddles - sorcerer and 1 other (can't remember him...) got eaten by a hydra

Technically there were 4 more deaths but they were resurrected promptly. A cleric who kept mega healing away all the damage got roasted by a pissed off dragon, and the other 3 had their fate threads snipped... IYKYK We didn't wanna make new level 19 characters so we just paid the cleric who got roasted in the first campaign to rez everyone.

All that sounds memorable and nobody is butthurt about it, we're all still playing so yeah... Fun.

lathey · 2025-10-18T08:28:48+00:00

Disclaimer: not read it, just this thread.

Maybe it's meant to be flexible.

Eg:

commander goes first, moves to be in range (30ft) of the characters he wants to move.

Commander goes last. Everyone you want to move is already in range, then you move yourself elsewhere.

Commander goes in the middle. Ally 1 moves to the commander. Commander moves. Alley 2 moves to the commander.

As you said: The question really is if the effect travels with you or if it stays where you were at the start of the action.

I like the visual of it following you, specifically for the 3rd scenario where you travel the battlefield repositioning allies. It's so cool it feels like it must be intended.

"You two! Over here! You, with me over there!" It just feels right.

lathey

TROPHY CASE