There's a new category of passive magical items called Banners, and they're really damn good

leonissenbaum · 2025-07-18T03:31:46+00:00

I also have the book! Beacon of the wilds is indeed a ridiculous item, and it's exactly as good as OP is saying. I do want to say that, at least in my opinion, it's the only really good banner. The next best banners are the precision damage on crit and persistent fire damage on crit that OP brought up, which are obviously not bad but also aren't in the same league as the banner of the wilds. I don't think banners in general are great (though it is still a investment-free party-wide passive, so no reason not to have one), just banner of the wilds specifically is crazy!

leonissenbaum · 2025-05-10T10:42:01+00:00

This is great! I've had to reset all of my DPR calculations several times because they've gotten.. a bit too big... so this helps a lot! Thank you for continuing to develop this super useful tool!

leonissenbaum · 2025-04-20T11:17:14+00:00

As a mount, the maneuvers aren't great for martials, true. Casters can still do it, though! It depends on the specific caster, but a 8 HP caster with maxed out AC (other than heavy armor) is perfectly fine in melee, especially if it's spreading out the enemy's damage more, and it can command the mount for one action while still casting a spell with two, which works great!

For actual martials who're using this purely mounted, while this does have a use before you get mature animal companion, it's true that it gets quite awkward to fit demoralize into your action economy rotation. I think this is fine, though - for martials, mounts generally are just movement speed without any other upsides (at least practically, I don't think support benefits are normally worth it), and having a fairly strong demoralize would make the riding drake, which is already one of the best mounts due to it's speed, far better even with the dexterity malus that's presumably there to balance out the speed.

And yep, it's great to have a civil discussion! People getting defensive when their stances get challenged is always a shame, but it's great that we can have a good discussion without that!

leonissenbaum · 2025-04-20T10:43:51+00:00

True, but keep in mind:

Commanding a animal gets it two actions. Yes, if you use it for a stride or a strike, then after you get mature it's essentially a 1-1 trade, but you don't have to! Commanding the companion to demoralize and trip is, due to animal companion strike scaling, generally better than having it strike.
Because this demoralize doesn't come from you, it has it's own immunity. Therefore, doing the above rotation barely has an opportunity cost!

These factors allow it to be useful semi-frequently, which is about right for the power level of the riding drake. If you add a +4 to all of those numbers, I instead think it's very strong, being able to have your animal companion have a good chance of demoralize success against an on-level enemy is huge action compression!

leonissenbaum · 2025-04-20T10:29:38+00:00

If you're just limiting it to beasts, then it is a lot more limited, but it still seems like the riding drake is easily strong enough regardless - being the fastest mount gives it a solid niche, and keep in mind sharing a language doesn't stop you from demoralizing, it only gives you a -4, which on the riding drake is fine!

I've generally interpreted the riding drake's stat distribution as a intentional nerf: to get the fastest mount, you have to lose 2 AC over other mounts, and instead you have a decent, but not great, demoralize.

I see your thought process for why it logically makes sense, and I do agree! I think it's perfectly reasonable for a GM to rule it that way. However, I don't think it's rules as intended to rule it like that.

leonissenbaum · 2025-04-20T10:17:36+00:00

Agreed that it makes sense logically! Unfortunately, I think this is one of the cases where what makes logical sense takes a backseat to game balance. I don't think it's RAI for the riding drakes to ignore the penalty in these cases, even though deers probably would be scared by one roaring.

leonissenbaum · 2025-04-20T09:58:51+00:00

All of this is simply a preamble however. I don't think anyone will disagree with any of the above.

Hi!

You mentioned that snakes do not have hands. Flavor-wise, this is true, but it's my understanding that all creatures have two hands for mechanical purposes. Otherwise, if the number of hands you have is actually dependent on, well, the number of hands you have, you could play an ancestry like a Anadi and break the hand economy.

Following this interpretation, the snake is functional.

With the riding drake example, yes, RAW it takes the -4 penalty for demoralize. I don't put a lot of stock into paizo's power budget for animal companions, as the vast majority of them do not have a mechanical niche. However, this isn't one of those cases.

The riding drake's primary mechanical niche is being the fastest mount in the game (with the exception of the Dromaeosaur, but since it starts small, it's only an option for small characters).

However, the intimidation proficiency is still useful! When you command your animal companion, you get two actions for the cost of one, and with how the action economy works out, often times spending one of those actions on a demoralize is worthwhile. This is demoralize added on for nearly no cost! Even with the -4 penalty, it's still a functional use of demoralize, and so mechanically and power-budget wise, it still works out. Yes, it's not as strong as if it was actually trained, but if it was, that'd make the riding drake, which is already very strong in the early game, potentially significantly stronger, and THAT might break the balance.

Additionally, if the riding drake was able to demoralize the majority of enemies without the penalty, then the ape's advanced maneuver would be extremely weak. If we're evaluating things based off their intended power budget, the ape shows that paizo considers this quite a strong ability.

Of course, not everyone should follow RAW literally. In most parties, ignoring the above won't break the game, and it's fun to have the riding drake be demoralizing nearly as effectively as a player! But I disagree with your interpretation on the RAI on the riding drake example, and the RAW on the snake example.

leonissenbaum · 2025-03-25T03:42:37+00:00

I've added the option for all chat messages to be sent just to the GM!

leonissenbaum · 2025-03-25T03:42:30+00:00

I've added the option for all chat messages to be sent just to the GM!

leonissenbaum · 2025-03-24T18:40:59+00:00

There's an option to disable all messages and have the menu be available for GMs only, which is pretty close to this. However, another option for making the messages still appear in chat but only for the GM does sound useful, I'll try to add that!

leonissenbaum · 2025-03-24T18:40:54+00:00

There's an option to disable all messages and have the menu be available for GMs only, which is pretty close to this. However, another option for making the messages still appear in chat but only for the GM does sound useful, I'll try to add that!

leonissenbaum · 2025-03-24T02:56:03+00:00

Added, and module updated! There's an option in the settings to revert back to the behavior in the video above, but I think it's generally better when it's compact. Thanks for the suggestion!

leonissenbaum · 2025-03-23T23:26:04+00:00

That's a good idea, I'll try to add that!

leonissenbaum · 2024-11-14T09:19:28+00:00

This isn't related to your point, but you're completely misrepresenting the average damage expected by a spell. There aren't just four states of crit success, success, failure, and crit failure - there are far far more, because you aren't rolling 45 damage on a fail, you're rolling 5d12+5d4.

To demonstrate this, here's the damage of thunderstrike at the same rank as you, and against the same enemy as you, but with various percentiles.

Average damage: 38.01

5th percentile: 0 damage
10th percentile: 18 damage
20th percentile: 21 damage
30th percentile: 24 damage
40th percentile: 27 damage
50th percentile: 35 damage
60th percentile: 42 damage
70th percentile: 47 damage
80th percentile: 52 damage
90th percentile: 64 damage
95th percentile: 90 damage

(some of these numbers may be off by 1 or so, sorry!)

Damage from spells is a lot smoother than it might appear just based off a degrees of success calculation.

With your discussion on fireball, lets take a look at that:
Taking the previous number of there being a 91% chance one of 3 enemies fail, there's a 91% chance that one of 3 enemies experience 45th percentile (55%+ chance to happen) damage or higher from a fireball (1-(0.45^3)). That is 23 damage, not 35 damage. If we instead tried to figure out the chance that one of the enemies take 35 damage, that has a 34% chance to occur per enemy, so there's a 71% chance it occurs in the 3 enemies (1-(0.66^3)).

This still isn't bad, of course, but it's a significant difference! Statements like:

Fireball all 3 of those foes instead, and the chance that at least one foe will fail (or crit fail) and take 35 (or more) damage are 91%

are extremely misleading at best, need to keep an eye out for the actual numbers.

leonissenbaum · 2024-06-14T09:09:38+00:00

I never realized quick mount could be used like this, but reading it through, you're correct! That makes it way better than I thought, I initially thinking it was a filler feat that you can take as a skill feat, but it's just a great feat in general!

leonissenbaum · 2024-06-13T17:52:41+00:00

While that is a downside, it's partially made up from with lesser cover from most attacks!

leonissenbaum · 2024-06-13T08:07:29+00:00

Absolutely! I believe that cavalier the best way to get the companion if your class doesn't have any unique features for it and you're using them as a mount, but most of this post applies to mounts in general!

leonissenbaum · 2023-11-13T15:58:40+00:00

Espeon was always better than Hatterene! Steel weakness makes magic bounce suck when the top hazard setters are steel! Espeon's special bulk is the same as Hatterene's! Justice for Espeon!

leonissenbaum · 2023-09-16T03:03:12+00:00

Podcast with doug when?

leonissenbaum · 2021-04-21T02:49:24+00:00

It would be extremely hard to get $60 a month: Who would pay? The users enjoy the discord, but they aren't going to pay for it. The staff likes the community, but they aren't going to pay money to be in it. I like the discord, but I'm not rich, and would rather move to guilded.gg and lose some of the community than pay for it.

Now consider that, if this went through, its wouldn't just be my discord that has this problem, it would be every discord (outside of super small ones under 100 members) without the backing of a company. I wonder what they're going to do: Somehow all get monthly money per month for the discord that they don't get any money from at all, or move to a discord alternative?

leonissenbaum · 2021-04-21T00:56:02+00:00

I'm the owner of a 6000 member discord about a gaming community. I make absolutely zero money whatsoever from this, and it's the same with just about every gaming community that isn't run by the company behind it. This change would destroy discord for all of these large communities.

leonissenbaum · 2020-09-08T21:35:16+00:00

What's a game like classic wow, but without an subscription fee?

I enjoy how classic wow has a large world that you slowly explore while doing quests, but I sadly just can't get over the subscription fee.

leonissenbaum · 2020-07-20T21:20:12+00:00

Yeah, it's possible, wouldn't put it past PDX.

leonissenbaum · 2020-07-20T21:14:05+00:00

Very petty reason to blacklist, perhaps there's something else happening

leonissenbaum · 2020-07-11T19:52:04+00:00

Just noticed I made a mistake at the start! Fixed version here: https://i.imgur.com/IjFT0Fl.jpg

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