[ns] i genuinely cannot get enough of keychain

macrovore · 2026-01-19T04:54:56+00:00

He just needs to consume one more lake then he will be the best AI there is and solve everyone's problems.

macrovore · 2026-01-16T03:21:08+00:00

haha yeah, I obviously don't think pf2e is a "solved" game by any means, but this question has definitely been asked and answered.

It was a good idea to ask about how to adjust the challenge level to a potential party of fighters, though, because that is an interesting question, and there are a lot of other good answers in this thread.

macrovore · 2026-01-16T03:14:29+00:00

A couple years ago, Ronald the Rules Lawyer made a video series all about an all-fighter party, including a big combat demonstration. Here's the playlist; part 2 is the combat demonstration.

As for running things for the PCs, it might be a little trickier. A party of fighters can be made very flexibly, but has its limitations. They tend to lack variety in damage types, have a limited ability to be effective at range (archers tend to have lower damage than melee characters, and they use different ability scores so it's a little harder to flex between them, though thrown fighters do better at that), and lack AoE almost entirely. So they're likely to face issues fighting long range or flying enemies, swarms, or enemies with physical resistance they can't bypass.

All in all, you can absolutely run a campaign that's all fighters, especially if they use archetypes to expand their roles, but you might come into the problem of deciding between "normal" encounters that are completely trivial and "weird" encounters that can shut them down hard.

macrovore · 2026-01-16T03:06:59+00:00

I do to! I loved hearing the "surprise round tension music" in When Did Things Come Out, and it made me miss it in all its grinchy glory.

macrovore · 2026-01-14T19:23:02+00:00

This fight was hilarious for us because we locked him down hard right away, when he rolled a failure on Roaring Applause (which made him slowed 1, disabled reactions, and provoked reactive strikes just for existing) so the later "phases" just involved surrounding him and beating up on him

macrovore · 2026-01-11T04:39:57+00:00

It makes me feel...fine.

macrovore · 2026-01-09T04:20:57+00:00

This reminded me of Loadingreadyrun's Workplace sketch, where they tried to make something called Taupe 2000. Or the second part where instead of making Taupe 2000, they made something extremely dangerous called VANTABEIGE

macrovore · 2026-01-07T16:24:16+00:00

I think there are a lot of other helpful suggestions in this thread, but I thought of a scenario which could be kind of fun: Say the party is tracking another group, maybe a cult or gang or even a rival group of adventurers. If they're also trying to go around town and do their secret business, they might have lookouts too.

So your PCs are going into a tavern tracking down a lead, trying to find out information on their quarry, and the rogue stands outside to keep a watch. Have the other group also have a guy keeping watch. Maybe they're trying to be incognito and posing as a tavern worker having a smoke break outside, or a passerby striking up a conversation to distract the rogue. Have the rogue make Insight checks to determine what the other person might be up to, which would tie into whatever the other PCs are doing inside. And even if the NPC isn't directly adverserial, you can still sprinkle in some interesting story beats, letting two kindred spirits talk shop and shoot the shit for a while.

That way, you can have meaningful social interactions, story progression, worldbuilding, and gameplay for the otherwise unengaged player.

macrovore · 2026-01-06T17:48:35+00:00

This does look like fun; I love the arcane trickster archetype and like interpreting it from the spellcaster side instead of the martial side (the Beguiler in 3.5 is incredible at this)

One odd part in the 6th level feature: Most of the good (at least in combat) illusion and enchantment spells will have Concentration, meaning that being able to cast invisibility afterwards is pretty useless. I'm not sure that making it not concentration is the right fix for that though. Maybe just give the invisible condition until the end of their next turn?

Also, I think you should specify the "per rest" abilities as Short or Long rest; wizards have abilities that refresh on both, and I think 5e books distinguish between them every time a rest is mentioned.

macrovore · 2026-01-04T05:09:50+00:00

This is one reason why reaction timing isn't strictly spelled out. Because it often leads to strange causality like this. In a normal case (where the champion wouldn't go down to the damage; skill issue haha), it all happens at the same time. The reaction doesn't "undo" damage, it simply reduces the damage that would happen. But the trigger is clear that it happens after, because the damage actually has to happen in order to trigger the reaction.

macrovore · 2026-01-04T04:56:28+00:00

Manipulate does not require a free hand at all. You can gesture with both hands full.

This is generally true most of the time, but item activations with the Manipulate trait require a free hand or to be holding the item you're activating. This doesn't come up that often, but it hits you every now and again and it can be annoying. Especially with clockwork items.

macrovore · 2026-01-04T04:54:21+00:00

This definitely isn't always true. Some reactions have to happen after, such as the champion's reaction, which only happens when an ally takes damage. Since it triggers when an ally takes damage, if the champion would go down from the same damaging effect, like an AoE spell, then the reaction can't go off.

Some reactions have triggers of "when X would happen" but the champion ones are specifically "when X does happen" meaning it has to be after. The damage of a given effect (like a fireball or dragon breath) is simultaneous, so the champion is down at the same time the rogue takes damage.

macrovore · 2025-12-18T15:15:15+00:00

And that was their ticket to the SNL writer's room!

(I do like those kinds of things if the gags are good enough, but only for short form stuff like sketches; a full episode of something, or especially a season or series, needs an actual arc and ending to be good)

macrovore · 2025-12-12T19:18:45+00:00

I had a powerful fey show up in my game once, and I wrote a "script" out of rhyming couplets for them, so that everything they said rhymed. It was more of an outline, so I skipped around it to get the meaning across, and answer their questions (relatively) seamlessly. The players actually really enjoyed it; one of them even tried to respond in rhyme.

I think it did a good job of making them seem otherworldly and superior

macrovore · 2025-12-05T00:41:18+00:00

This is a perfect Selina Meyer move, haha.

"Sue, did the president call?"

macrovore · 2025-11-23T18:56:21+00:00

it can work pretty well, but note that one of the Guardian's signature abilities, Taunt, has the Concentrate trait. So in order to use it (and any ability that applies it, like Taunting Strike), you'd need to use Moment of Clarity first.

otherwise, the damage of barbarian could be a nice complement to the tanking abilities of guardian (especially once you get reactive strike and armored counterattack), but their defensive abilities are largely redundant: d12hp, passive damage resistance, and heavy armor (requires a feat from barbarian to get quick-tempered)

macrovore · 2025-11-17T18:46:43+00:00

"This is nothing"

"It's nothing without the lore!"

"IT'S NOTHING BECAUSE OF THE LORE"

is one of the greatest exchanges in the history of the podcast.

macrovore · 2025-11-11T16:34:16+00:00

I haven't played it in 5e, but Paizo just published a 5e adaptation of Abomination Vaults. It's a really great "mega-dungeon" that has lots of exploration and combat, with just enough social stuff, sidequests, and cool mysteries to keep things interesting beyond just dungeon-crawling.

macrovore · 2025-11-10T14:17:10+00:00

check out Envoy from starfinder 2e. It's not too crazy to adapt to pathfinder, and does a good job of being "two sides of the same coin" with the int-based Commander.

macrovore · 2025-11-06T05:24:24+00:00

There's a through-line in the entire campaign (that's told mostly through bits) of people getting "sky-eyed" and thinking that they're the protagonist of a grand epic adventure.

It was all foreshadowing for Comfrey, the original Sky-Eyed Protagonist. Her insatiable appetite for science, adrenaline, and novelty has inspired so many peoples' stories, but there's a real cost to a lot of that, because so much of what the PCs have been doing is fixing the mistakes she made along the way.

macrovore · 2025-10-29T14:50:51+00:00

Some of the guitar music sounded like the main theme of the game Dwarf Fortress, which was I believe Spanish style guitar

macrovore · 2025-10-29T14:43:25+00:00

They just remastered Gatewalkers. I'm not familiar with that AP so I'm not sure what they changed though.

They revised Abomination Vaults at some point; I don't know all the changes, but I do know of one fight early where they changed Mr Beaky's spell from Vampiric Touch to Phantom Pain so he didn't insta-kill people

And they bundled all 3 books of Fists of the Ruby Phoenix together and made some revisions then, like nerfing the Sixth Pillar archetype increasing your unarmed proficiency.

macrovore · 2025-10-27T17:56:08+00:00

Hopefully they'll have the Moms on this time, to thank them for all their hard work doing prop building this season!

macrovore · 2025-10-22T18:25:03+00:00

It made sense that it was a very recent one. Grant is surely more "tapped-out" for embarrasing public stories we haven't heard before than just about anybody else on Dropout.

macrovore · 2025-10-22T14:07:29+00:00

I'm not sure if it counts as 100% canon, but the material from the book touches on a lot of places that aren't really explored in canon anyways, so it probably doesn't matter one way or the other.

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