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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 15th, 2023

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  • So Harry Turtledove’s Worldwar series explores an invasion of Earth by small ish reptilian aliens.

    My head canon for the aliens and they’re differences in culture from humans is that they basically came from pre-meteor Earth and evolved from real velociraptors (which as I understand, were actually only about 3 ft/1 m tall, and were considered the most intelligent/pack forming dinos of their time).

    Its an interesting series (if something of a bizarre premise).







  • I have a chip on my shoulder about the metric system as it appears in sci-fi writing.

    It drives me nuts that in books like The Expanse (and I think the Bobiverse and Andy Wier’s works) that the writer will call distances in “thousands/millions of kilometers”.

    Really feels more reasonable to just go full send and call them megameters and gigameters, but maybe that’s just my American non-metric mind trying to force full use of a system in a way those born to it don’t actually do.

    Anyway, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.


  • So the way I could see this working for her is have Bernie Sanders come and endorse her right out the gate (I doubt he’d be up for being her running mate, but it’d probably be an even better run if he accepted that).

    Ol’ boy had been VERY effective at breaking into right - leaning spaces and I could see him contributing to getting the historically Democrat (but not recently Democrat) voter out for AOC.

    My real concern is the party leaders. I could see them trying to hold back resources and effectively pulling the same moves they pulled in Bernie to hold her down.







  • I’ve always been allergic to spell casters (the strategy behind the best use of spell slots just never clicked for me - which is extra painful because it seems like if should be simple, but I consistently manage to botch it), going back to when i picked this all up in the 3.0e days.

    I think that’s caused me to not really engage with the spell casting side of spell casters in PF2e. I remember in 3.5, we banned Mystics because spontaneous divine spell casting was broken, so maybe I just need to run one to see if work.


  • Hmmm, okay. So I have a personal affinity for Swashbucklers. Compared to a proper fighter, they don’t lay down much damage, but they can move, and then when you get where you need to be, you can lay down pain in other ways (love a good tumble through + trip).

    I remember immediately seeing the value in all that when it was first released, even though my party said that it felt way to convoluted. I think I’m just in the other side of that kind of conversation here.




  • I don’t know if I agree that all classes are good.

    Oracle and Gunslinger have always (at least in my mind) seemed to be overly weak. Like, Gunslinger seems like if should be a high damage output class, but lack of Dex to Damage really seems to hinder him from being a hard hitter. Lol, not to mention, guns just feel really weak.

    For Oracle, her curse seems a major downside without a compensating upside (at least until late levels; haven’t built one above lv 5).

    I’d love to hear counterpoints of anyone has any.

    To be clear, 95% agree with your takes though.



  • Two big things I love:

    • Three action system: every “activity” (strike, stride, cast a spell, etc) has an action cost. On a standard turn, your character gets 3 actions to spend on those various activities. This obviates the need for DnD’s rules about spending a whole turn running since you can just spend multiple actions striding.

    • Keyword system: PF2e leans more onto standardized keywords and uses them appropriately. Everything (all actions, weapons, items, even statuses) has a set of traits that (usually) briefly explains how the thing acts. It allows for standardized templates for interactions between different elements of the game. This takes a HUGE burden off the GM during game play, esp for modules that weren’t written to think about each other. All the examples I can think of would take several pages to explain, but you can look up some things on Easy Tools and see their traits.

    Bonus thing I love: all the rules are openly published, leading to TONS of extra tools that just make the game easier to run. (That said you should buy a set of books to help the publishers after you’ve been converted).