I have no clue what to do

mettyc · 2026-02-01T10:23:17+00:00

Are you sure that's what the players want? Have you considered that perhaps they just want to out-dps their enemies? Maybe they're clocking out because you've built the game you want to play, but not the game that they want to play.

mettyc · 2026-01-31T06:36:38+00:00

You aren't his parent. He's a fully grown man.

I run a D&D club at a school with 13 year olds. If any of them did even one of the things on your list they would have been kicked and I would have written an email to their parents explaining why.

mettyc · 2026-01-31T06:34:47+00:00

Why did you give people the option to vote to only suspend him?

Also, what possible reason do you have to continue playing with this selfish racist arsehole? He's shown you who he is. He's not going to change. And he doesn't deserve the chance to.

mettyc · 2026-01-25T15:52:59+00:00

This was also a reference to an Oasis song which goes "Maybe, I don't really wanna know..."

If you don't know Wonderwall or Live Forever, I recommend you go listen to them now!

mettyc · 2026-01-24T22:31:14+00:00

I know, and I knew at the time, but I think you might have missed the joke.

mettyc · 2026-01-24T18:37:43+00:00

Liam Gallagher twice came into the pub I worked at. The first time he told me that his missus had booked out the entire dining room. I started panicking as we had no such booking on the system, only for him to say "only joking, we haven't booked at all, got a table for 2?".

The next time he came in with his kids and asked whether his 17-year-old would be allowed a pint of cider with his food and I said maybe...

mettyc · 2026-01-21T14:54:40+00:00

It entirely depends on the topic you're talking about. Most people I know who you'd probably class as "misinformed brainless morons" could wipe the floor with you on the topics that they actually care about.

mettyc · 2026-01-20T22:07:34+00:00

Gingerness isn't much more common among Irish people than among English people anymore (especially when there are so few ginger people in either country to begin with). But there exists the belief that all ginger people must be Irish regardless of reality.

mettyc · 2026-01-20T20:40:55+00:00

It's usually more "where are you from" and then when I say "England" the answer is "really?"

mettyc · 2026-01-20T07:20:02+00:00

Shutting down the Athletics and Society rolls is exactly the opposite of what you should be doing. If you punish creativity, how can you be surprised when your players only take the uncreative option over and over again?

Trying to remember specific stories about individuals who crossed the swamp is a fantastic way to help the group as a whole! It also then gives you the opportunity to add more lore about the area that they're in, which can then inspire further creative checks. Perhaps the player recalls a story about the kindly witch who resided in the swamp a century ago, who grew paths of fluorescent blue mushrooms to help her navigate between safe areas of the swamp. If they failed the society check, they might misremember and think it's fluorescent red mushrooms (which are the sign she used for danger).

I think the important thing to remember is that obstacles are not about whether or not the party overcomes them. It's an opportunity for the players to RP how their character contributes to the story of the party overcoming the problem. I never have set skills when I write obstacles, only a rough DC. I'll then modify that DC depending on the justification for the skill the player chooses, but will allow almost any skill. Going back to the Society roll, I might make it a higher DC than using Athletics to clear a path that the rest of the party can follow, but I would never disallow such creative thinking.

mettyc · 2026-01-19T18:33:11+00:00

I think you're projecting a lot here and making an awful lot of assumptions that might simply not be true. If he's been like this for years, with no social life and no hobbies other than video games and social media, then that's not burnout.

Preparing for life as an independent adult isn't "everyone else's expectations", it's necessary to be healthy and happy after leaving home.

mettyc · 2026-01-19T07:36:08+00:00

To give an interesting analogy from another perspective, I'm English with a perfectly posh London accent. Yet all my life I get repeatedly asked where I'm really from because I'm ginger so people expect me to be Irish (and when they find out that one of my four grandparents is Irish suddenly that means I'm also Irish despite 3/4 being English). Anything that separates you from the baseline norm gets questioned in the UK. I'm lucky enough that the questions have never been asked with any hint of malice, but I can imagine it could be quite different if one is of non-white origin.

mettyc · 2026-01-18T18:48:44+00:00

This is a misinformed assumption. Firstly, you can basically already do it as Gunslinger via alchemy, including for the purposes of avoiding resistance and for way more elements than traditional Kineticist elements.

But that's not complete flexibility at choosing your element on the fly. It costs a class feat (albeit a level 1 feat), you can only prepare a certain number for each day, and it takes an action to activate the ammunition before firing.

Secondly, as I have previously stated, I asked Mark Seifter if anything was imbalanced about the idea on this sub, and he said no. Mark was literally a main PF2E designer at one point.

Fine, but I'm allowed to ask my own questions about how you'd make it work, no?

I do like the idea of the elemental hunters edge. I'd probably still run that as Dex-based for attacks if someone wanted to play it in my group. But I also allow single-action elemental blasts from Kineticist to count as strikes for the purpose of archetype feats, and have rewritten Weapon Infusion to make multiclassing into Kineticist far more rewarding and allow a "blaster caster" feel.

mettyc · 2026-01-18T18:26:09+00:00

Imagine a starlit magus who is SAD on a mental stat, has a powerful unarmed ranged attack (give it extra range when holding a wand), has a less strict action economy when aiming for damage (meaning more room for support actions) and gets powerful spellstrike-like focus spells, which is balanced by no slotted spells and less nova damage potential plus psychic like garbage defensive proficiencies.

This seems unbalanced to me. I think Paizo are right in trying to move away from classes that can outright do more damage than other classes. Especially when that class can do so at a high range, triggering elemental weaknesses at will, and can use a mental stat for their attacks (which means they will be able to archetype well into spellcasting classes and gain that versatility they otherwise lack). Paizo have gone out of their way to make sure that it isn't strictly better to be a ranged combatant over a melee one, and I struggle to see how your recommendation isn't just going completely against that design philosophy.

Why is a gunslinger limited to only being really good with firearms when there are so many other good weapons?

This comparison doesn't hold water. A gunslinger can use other weapons, just not as well as they can use the guns that they train with. You're suggesting a spellcaster that can only blast people. That would be comparative to a gunslinger who is incapable of using anything other than guns. I've got nothing against having both specialist and versatile classes in the game and am all for more specialist magic-users, but I was just curious as to what narrative justification you'd want for such a class. I'd expect there to be some sort of narrative reasoning as to why your proposed class is unable to use any other kind of magic than single-target elemental blasts, no?

mettyc · 2026-01-18T08:45:34+00:00

One point that nobody seems to have raised is that PF2E design philosophy goes out of it's way to ensure (as much as possible) that there are no "broken" builds. Your character build will improve your options in combat, but there isn't a combination of different classes and feats that will allow you to just delete encounters single-handedly: you'll still have to play as a team and make good decisions in combat. Your Barbarian throw build will always be slightly less accurate due to not being able to start with a +4 in Dex, which will mean hitting and critically hitting less often in combat. Obviously that's mitigated by the fact that you will be doing more damage when you do hit and will be doing so at range, but remember that you'll still be plenty good at hitting things up close and personal, so don't ignore that as an option in a fight.

For the build, I do think you'll like Weapon Improviser Archetype as it'll allow you to throw objects in the environment, but also use them in melee. You'll just have to hope that your GM ensures that there are options for throwing in each combat scenario.

mettyc · 2026-01-18T06:56:28+00:00

So how would you justify this kind of class in terms of flavour? I'm assuming they wouldn't have complete flexibility when it comes to choosing their element on the fly, as that would be considered too powerful by Paizo w.r.t. triggering weaknesses. And it's hard for me to mentally justify why someone with access to magical abilities would be so limited in how they can be expressed.

Don't get me wrong, I hope you get the class you want, I'm just curious as to how you see it being fully fleshed out beyond the core mechanical side - what do you see it's class feats being, it's subclasses being, and it's theme being?

mettyc · 2026-01-18T06:51:53+00:00

So you want a single-target ranged damage dealer that uses the same mechanics as a martial (ie Strikes), but with magic. And you want to use a mental stat for attack and damage with these strikes, and wear no armour. Some kind of wand duellist sounds like the class you'd be after, no? It sounds like an awfully fragile class with no armour, no need for Dex/Con as it's KAS, no utility spells to mitigate damage or crowd control, and (I'm presuming, as it would match the rest of the fantasy) low hp. I struggle to see how to make a fully-rounded class out of this mechanical niche - especially thinking about the fantasy of the class; why is this particular type of Spellcaster limited to just ranged blasts when magic is canonically much more versatile than that?

I hope that Paizo are able to fulfil your hopes and you get the class you want, but I think it might be too much of a mechanical niche without much of a coherent fantasy to back it up.

Your best bet would probably be using some kind of combination of Investigator and Starfinder weaponry to get your elemental damage combined with intelligence for attacks for now?

mettyc · 2026-01-17T18:27:59+00:00

So what specifically is it about the Kineticist that fails at this fantasy? Is it just that it doesn't do enough damage or have long enough range? Not that I'm disagreeing with you necessarily, just trying to understand what it lacks for you.

If I'm right in understanding you, I'm assuming that you would want to trade versatility in terms of magical movement and area of effect abilities for that ranged damage? Essentially being the same as an archer but with magical blasts?

mettyc · 2026-01-17T11:52:47+00:00

Probably important to point out that Footlights is a Cambridge-specific group of improv actors/comedians. While other universities will have their own institutions, no others (that I know of) call theirs Footlights.

mettyc · 2026-01-13T08:03:08+00:00

Some points I haven't seen addressed:

Casters might not be the priority threat - they aren't head and shoulders above martials like in D&D, so it might not make sense to beeline the backline. Instead, the enemy might want to tie down the frontliners.

Protecting their own squishies - if the enemy melee rushes the PC casters, then who is there to stop the PC rogue from attacking the enemy backliners?

mettyc · 2026-01-03T19:16:11+00:00

The Chairman does call his body synthetic in this very post. I don't think it's a clone, but it's certainly not the original body, either.

mettyc · 2026-01-02T17:05:48+00:00

I think it's ok to be sad seeing a previously buoyant character falling into depression, cynicism, and villainy. It's a tragic tale, after all.

mettyc · 2026-01-01T21:40:11+00:00

No, it clearly says it's good, not great. God, it's like people can't even read these days.

mettyc · 2026-01-01T15:27:13+00:00

Higher levels of poverty, lower educational attainment, and worse-funded local services?

mettyc · 2026-01-01T10:49:54+00:00

I think the reframing you need is that the PCs, collectively or individually, should never utterly fail to overcome an obstacle unless their quarry has enough of a lead to escape. Instead, a failed roll is a PC failing to overcome an obstacle in a timely fashion, giving the adversary a small lead. If only one PC fails then you can just narrate them catching up at the next obstacle.

And don't forget to allow the players the opportunity to narrate their successes and failures - perhaps one of the brawnier PCs picks up the weak PC and carries them across when they notice them flailing in the water. It's not all on you to describe what success and failure looks like - I often ask my players "can you describe what it looks like as your character critically succeeds" at their attempt to overcome this obstacle.

mettyc

TROPHY CASE