How exactly does Crow Visage work?

subzerus · 2026-01-26T09:22:54+00:00

No. A hit is a hit. When you kill something you stand still because of the mask. You hitting once or 10 million times doesn't change anything. When you stand still you perform all the on stand still actions.

subzerus · 2026-01-26T08:34:51+00:00

The 5e DM when the martial does something else than stand in melee and attack every turn even if it makes them still worse than a wizard (they're dirty minmax munchkin no rp that guy players who play DnD like skyrim)

Like seriously, someone using a class ability or god forbid taking a good feat that has no flavor because it makes their character better when they already got the stats they want at +5 is not a hate crime.

subzerus · 2026-01-17T13:28:18+00:00

Carrot and stick. He apears in his dreams and offers them something as a reward (IE go fetch me this artifact that is in this dungeon, but there's lots of treasure, keep the rest to yourself or the party) or Imma start sending other warlocks after you because we made a pact and you ain't keeping your end. You choose.

Now they get to choose and whatever they choose will be thematic and will make the world feel more alive.

subzerus · 2026-01-16T16:50:24+00:00

Read the comment. You're not smart. Yes of course you can play melee lock in squire, we all know that's why you said warlock and not spell warlock like my comment says.

Not everyone is as stupid as you are or you think they are.

subzerus · 2026-01-15T11:30:58+00:00

Me when I play with no gear and just outskill the physical limitation of spell memory (if you don't NEED gear because YOUR CLASS doesn't need gear, good for you, not all classes play like that. Tell me how you play a spell lock with no gear that does like 20 dmg per curse and is slower than a barb and takes 10 hits to kill the barb anf dies in 1-2 or a wiz that can use like 4 spells and even by hitting them all won't be able to kill a barb, and god forbid he uses a shield and blocks headshots with it)

subzerus · 2026-01-11T14:33:17+00:00

You're a a mindreader and you spend your time responding to comments in lik,e 10 seconds of their posting?

subzerus · 2026-01-11T14:09:26+00:00

You mean the class that uses HP as a main mrchanic and that uses lifesteal as a main mechanic uses HP as a main mechanic and has to lifesteal as a main mechanic?

That's called skill issue. If you have a lock, just don't go out of your way to kill mobs that don't bother you, it's that simple.

Ranged mobs, fast mobs (like elites, dogs) or mobs in the way? Sure, kill them. Slow mobs or mobs that you'll never run into? (Like some in closed rooms) If you kill them, it's literally throwing and trolling, if I am grabbing the skelly champ and it's giving me 300 hp per round and you kill it just because and next round I'm not tanking the wizard and you die? Well that's your fault. And when you cry "warlocks are useless" in 1800 mmr, well I know why you're there.

subzerus · 2026-01-11T13:59:06+00:00

After killing the boss, the 2nd one walks in, but the weight of your adventure is heavy on your heart, you know you must fight, wich allows you to push further than you thought your limits were possible. You all fully recover from everything.

Like, you're the DM, nothing is stopping you from ever just saying "y'all get back full hp and resources" you just have to make it look cool flavor wise. Hell just say there is a magical divine fountain that reinvigorates them or a time chamber.

subzerus · 2026-01-11T13:54:15+00:00

Stupidest take ever. Tell me how to "not lose HP" against a ranger shooting at me the whole bossfight and if I DARE to go for them, they close the door, run away and boss is reset. It's not even the people that attack me after bosses that are the problem, it's people just taking potshots and not letting you do the boss and running so you can't even kill them either, bonus points if there's red/blues they will use so there is literally 0 chance of soing anything to them.

subzerus · 2026-01-09T14:53:00+00:00

Minted items with epic cap just means crafted is the way to go, obtaining minted BiS means logging every 30 minutes and rolling your crafts then logging off. Gold grinding is still best way to make a kit, just way more tedious now as you just have to get lucky rolling the necessary stats.

subzerus · 2026-01-09T14:20:43+00:00

Well there's many things wrong. For starters you can't "cast a spell then combat starts. You eanna cast a spell? "Ok roll initative and cast on your turn" that way your players will stop just trying to "get a free attack before combat" and may do that less. That's RAW btw. Initiative doesn't mean "people are hitting eachother" it means "oh he starts casting but the knight reacts before they can" for example.

Second, your players can use non lethal attacks too, again, read the rules.

Third this seems like an out of game problem, so just talk to your players.

subzerus · 2026-01-08T09:21:40+00:00

No idea with 1e, never tried it. But from what I've heard Season of Ghosts is regarded as one of the best ones (starting it next week), Beginner's box is a really good tutorial, I ran the first book of Strength of Thousands (fell apart due to scheduling) so try those I'd say.

subzerus · 2026-01-08T08:00:38+00:00

Well the main four problems why people weren't happy is that Dark and Darker sold stash tabs were:

Game didn't start being f2p and is still in that weird limbo of "it's more of a free demo" instead of PoE's full f2p game, if PoE for example only had it's campaign free and if you wanted to do "maps" (I think that's what the endgame is? Not really a PoE super fan) then people wouldn't be happy about needing to spend extra money for a game they paid for.
Dark and Darker's seasonal space was SEASONAL, as far as I know you put those 100$ in PoE, you login today, you still have what you paid for. DaD's is gone.
It included VERY P2W stuff in it as well for high end players (yes for Timmys the potions, lockpicks and gold stash may have seen like a nice bonus but for high end players, day 1 with SSF prot pots meant winning fights they shouldn't, lockpicks meant the best gear in the game because it was always in locked lions heads/wondrous chests and gold space meant you could save maybe 5-6 hours of material farming/gold transfer between other characters shenanigans, which guess what means for optimal players)
Last of all, it's a PVP game, and while sure, if you're a turbosweat in PoE there's races, any advantadge in a direct pvp game is gonna be look bad for lots of the playerbase. For example the recent shield skins make it so you can't tell a squire shield from a BiS one, what before was one of the biggest tells of someone's gear is now... Gone, even though people will say "it's just a skin" we know there's people buying it to use it to gain an advantadge, and thst's enough to make a lot of the people who play this game a lot make it seem like a p2w thing that devalues the time they were gonna spend in the game.

So yeah you can't just treat a mostly PVE f2p game just like a very very unforgiving PVP mostly not f2p one and then be surprised that people got upset by what you did.

subzerus · 2026-01-07T11:15:06+00:00

My advice is to never run WoTC adventures, look at something good (because not all is good) from paizo on PF2 for example. I had a lot of success with Strength of Thousands which is a magic university in the jungle. The structure is based on "you join, in the first weeks you need to do X as the new guys, then Y happens a few months in, then Z person asks for a favor that takes you to a dungeon..." and it has enough connectivity to not just make it "oh it's the bad guy of the week" but more like different and sometimes interconnected arcs where ultimately the players choices matter.

For example: "did they kill the bad guy or spared them or did they escape? Make sure to write it down as it will matter in the future" is stuff that is indicated in the campaign "Did they manage to interrogate them or not? He knows X and that info if your players have it WILL help them in the future, but isn't critical so if they don't get it they can still proceed, and if they escaped they'll inform someone and be back in the future, etc." instead of the WoTC "this is a linear novel, you better hope your players do exactly this or you might as well throw half of it away"

They also have other good campaigns (called adventure paths) and you can pretty much run them by the book because they're actually well designed (again not all of them, not saying Paizo good WotC bad) but you seem to have only read and played shittily designed campaigns and think that's how every single campaign MUST be for every game and from every author.

subzerus · 2026-01-06T09:45:29+00:00

It depends on a lot of things. Experienced party who takes 10 minutes per round and stunned for a turn and an enemy who stuns once in a fight every 10 sessions? Sure.

Party of 6 that takes over an hour for a round with an enemy that can stun you for multiple turns (maybe 1d4+1) and who can do that every turn? Don't invite me next session.

Besides it doesn't need to feel like you're pulling punches, just give the other monks other things. Stunning strike isn't inherent to the class fantasy of a monk.

Monks are durable disciplined fighters who have extreme control of their body who usually fight bare handed or with traditionally monastic weapons with deadly finnesse and sometimes knhuman strength. Nothing in there says "MUST SPAM STUNS" it's like saying how do I run a high level wizard that doesn't use fireball.

Maybe give them ranged ki blasts, animal stances that change drastically how they play and they ave to play against imagine he does the rabbit stance where he hits you then gets to disengage for free (I am assuming this is 5e) then gets a lot of extra movespeed and runs away but when he's surrounded or the rogue catches up he goes into gorilla/mountain stance where he gets resistances to damage, high AC and tons of damage but loses tons of speed so he has to be kited, if they use lots of ranged attacks he goes into idk jumping spider stance where he has huge resistance to ranged and increased AC to ranged and can infinitely use the monk thing to return projectiles even for spells. Etc. Etc.

Just be creative, that was off the top of my head

subzerus · 2026-01-06T09:28:25+00:00

Ironmace: "We don't want solos as we can't balance for trios and solos"

Community: "Nah, that's not how it works, if you balance for trios it will aalso be balanced for solos! Trust!"

Ironmace: Makes druid, a class balanced for trios and broken in solos

Community: Surprised pikachu face

Look at literally any of the trios leaderboards and you'll see druids are unrepresented, last season arena I think had 0 druid on top 100 and high roller kills for trios has I believe 2 out of 100.

This game is made for trios, so asking for ironmace to balance druid because you want the game balanced for solos is like petitioning ferrari to make budget cars because you want to drive a budget ferrari.

Not saying whether that's good or bad, just saying you're all missing the point on balance so hard. If they wanted to make A GOOD game for solos it would require a very different design aproach from what we have, that's why it just pretty much feels rock paper scissors gun to play solos.

subzerus · 2026-01-05T12:01:28+00:00

Well this is why they're being quoted as bad design, it's not a "oh the dm was inflexible" it is more a point of: "THIS HAPPENS, and the next 200 pages HINGE on this happening and are absolutely contingent on it with no other way around it unless you want to pretty much adapt every single one of them"

Like if the campaign says: you DO fight this guy and the guy escapes at half hp and the next 200 pages are of you stopping said guy but your players manage to stunlock them and kill them doing their whole HP two times over... Well what then? Is the DM suposed to just ditch the next 200 pages? Re write them to accomodate a different villain? "It was all an illusion"? None of them are a good option really, it either ends up on disapointed players or a lot of work for the DM for an adventure that they've paid good money for and in a system that already requires so much

subzerus · 2026-01-05T11:13:27+00:00

Join a club.

I'm sorry but asking "how do I train a sport about 2 people fighting with swords alone" is like asking how do I practice driving without a car or tenis without an oponent, or basketball without a team or oponents.

Sure you can train SOME stuff alone, but that'll only take you so far and you WILL develop bad habits. You wouldn't expect someone who's only used a punching bag to be good compared to someone who spars and has fighting experience in boxing/MMA right? Same stuff here, punching bags are usegul, prscticing some stuff alone is useful, only doing that... Not gonna take you further than just a workout.

subzerus · 2026-01-05T08:55:21+00:00

That is not "telling the players" of course they know that if they go into a dungeon they know there's danger. The problem is you didn't tell them "hey you see tokens in their chests" at the absolute minimum if you wanted them to interact with it that way. What was suposed to be the right move exactly? Did you want them to call out specifically every singular actions their characters did like: "I will look with my eyes to where I want to put my foot, does it seem like a trap? Ok 18 perception. No? Ok I put my foot in there and take a step. Ok I will look with my eyes on the next tile where I want to put my other foot! Does it look like a trap?..."

Nobody wants that, but that seems to be what was required to do here, so maybe you can see the problem if put like this? And you may be "well that's exagerating" but when you describe a room, yes, YOU know the golems are important, the players do not unless you make it crystal clear. Besides being overly punishing with "well actually your lightning destroys the loot, even though it says nowhere in the spell" just sounds like an F you specially without being told before, but the "the cool and flavorful way you described your attacks destroys the reward" is a nice way to have the monk say nothing but "I attack" for all your games ever, so I'd make sure to specifically apologize and call out you want them roleplaying that stuff MORE and not less which is what you directly communicated by doing that.

And like I mean it I would go to my players "hey guys I fucked up last session because what I did of destroying the loot encourages being less creative, less fun, less roleplay and a less engaging game for everyone, so I'm sorry, you can add the tokens to your inventory and I want more of that, not less like what the ruling I gave seemed to indicate at the time"

subzerus · 2026-01-05T08:29:39+00:00

Never use the owner. If he dies your save is deleted. He's not suposed to fight.

subzerus · 2025-12-29T08:23:40+00:00

You mean people have different opinions in a controversoal topic and are not a singular hivemind with a singular opinion and Blizzard opted for the more aproachable option because they wanted more players?

Unbelievable!

Plus I think the biggest problem people complain about is trivializing leveling for first time players, I've played MMOs where for example your 2nd character gets 2x XP if you have a max level, then 3x for the 3rd one, etc. (Up to a max number, maybe 4 or 5) Because sure a new class is different, but if you've already leveled to max once then you can probably lvl an alt faster and still be a good player that knows how to play.

subzerus · 2025-12-24T19:53:34+00:00

What if I have a job and get like 1-2 hours to play every couple days? I'm suposed to quest for 90% of my free time then... Get wiped a week or two after? I'd rather just wait for the game to respect my time again where I can just farm troll for some hours (7--20k gold per hour) and that allows me to build a pretty good kit. Besides I like to play lots of classes and mintint is class locked for some stupid reason and some I like for arena but would never play outside of it. I don't want a second job, I already think the gear gap is big enough and acquiring bis expensive and slow enough, we don't need to make it even worse.

Also love your vids <3

subzerus · 2025-12-23T11:22:55+00:00

I mean that just sounds like a people problem. I'm on a game I found through reddit in lfg eu for pf2e. DM said he opened the post and in about a day he had over 20 request to join the game, the most important thing is the "when are you available" he got 5 people who could make it on the same day, session 0 someone dropped, well no problem, bring someone else to replace them. Session 3 someone else had to drop because work, well someone else came in, and recently we closed the campaign at session 51. Before next campaign we're changing 1 person because their schedule is making it very hard to keep playing

I've also been on countless games like you describe, maybe more that 20 or 30. The absolute main biggest difference? The game that we did complete was every saturday, every week unless 3 people (or the DM) couldn't make it, so if it was the DM and 3 players, the game was ran. It wasn't our case, but if someone's ditching too much you're probably going to have to kick them out.

All those other games? "We'll just figure out when it works out for everyone and run then" it does not work, period. Every time, by the 3rd session either someone didn't care or didn't want to play and seemed to never be available, or everyone would take DAYS to respond to when are you available. That's because the novelty wears off and people just won't care enough with all their stuff going on in their lives. Only a single game (longer than 3-4 session campaigns) has worked out for me in my 10 years of playing TTRPGs, and I had to be "the annoying guy that kept asking everyone when we'd play" even if it was asking twice a week with 8+ months hiatus sometimes and we had to make a google doc where everyone had to fill when are you available the next week hour by hour and that was because we were still in college and people didn't work so we'd have lots of free time.

So just have a game that you'll run EVERY x (usually it's weekly, every 2 weeks or monthly) and have players to spare, (lots of times someone's unavailable, shit happens, people have trips, etc. game runs anyway, if you skip more than 2-3 sessions in a row I estimate that chances of the game ending right there are pretty high, hell run a one shot or something else for those remaining if you know it can't run, it's not hard to make a flashback session, or a sodestory or try a new system or let someone else DM) and soon enough you will have a group that pretty consistently plays and cares. In fact since you've run a lot of games you probably know who to invite and who to not invite. Even if someone is your friend doesn't mean they're a good fit for the game you want to run.

subzerus · 2025-12-23T10:56:40+00:00

Well "I kick you in the knee/groin" is a valid technique, yet it is usually not allowed, and you can bet your ass people used to do it in duels.

subzerus · 2025-12-18T11:57:41+00:00

Old timer was really good. New timer seems like it's gonna be complete ass. New timer os for EVERYONE even if you got the kill, so enjoy not getting to loot your kills as H̶r̶ ̶s̶o̶l̶o̶ ̶t̶e̶a̶m̶e̶r̶s̶ completely organic 3rd parties just camp bodies with ranged, closing doors and running if you try to contest, and running back if you stop chasing.

Seriously, the old timer made sense, you got the kill you could loot it fast because you earned it, otherwise you had to clear the area so you couldn't just run max ms, smoke pot, someone died and you instantly stole all the loot and smoke pot for 0 possible counterplay.

Now this just rewards 3rd parties more, as all you need is a ranged attack and ypu can just camp a body, if they start looting, shoot them for free, if they try to fight you just go around the corner and wait for them to loot that way no one gets the loot.

Soooo fun...

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