Monks in D&D are no joke. I’ve gotten torn up by them before. That class has actually been around since the very beginning. I think I might replay as one.

I’m coming into Act 3 now, and there definitely have been a few story junctures where a failed check would have had severe consequences, or it would have caused me to miss out on some nice loot.

I’m also not a fan of a 1 being a critical failure. I think if you have the bonuses, they should always be counted. Maybe scale them down to compensate for the adjustment. Maybe even use a different die. But don’t negate them entirely, unless maybe the character who’s rolling truly has no relevant proficiency.

It made me miss the RPG systems where if you have like 50 points in Speech or Intelligence, you just automatically pass a dialog check. It lets people be consistently rewarded for investing points in a specialization.

Still a fantastic game with an epic fantasy vibe that I haven’t felt since Dragon Age Origins. It’s a small gripe.

The clip was part of Guldbrandsen’s documentary, A Storm Foretold, released in March of this year.

So there’s nothing actually new about this video. It’s just that Donald forgot that someone filmed the slimy inner workings of his re-election campaign when it came time to mount a defense, and he doesn’t have any good lawyers to help him avoid painting himself into a corner again. Hell, he probably lied to his lawyers, too.

It turns out that there is a paladin option. But you have to do some evil stuff to recruit her.

• Half elf Order of the Ancients paladin
• Shadowheart light domain cleric
• Karlach beast ranger
• Wyll champion fighter

I wanted Karlach in the party, but I didn’t feel like I had room for her at the time as a barbarian. Booted Astarion and made Karlach a ranger so that I could still have rogue-like utility. Rogue or bard didn’t make sense for Karlach lore-wise. Made Wyll a fighter because it turned out that I could have another melee fighter, and I simply cannot figure out a way to make warlocks as combat-effective as the other classes. And I don’t like the absence of a proper spellbook anyway. But I like his personality. I chose paladin half-elf for the player character because there isn’t a good-aligned paladin option otherwise, and half-elves get a +2 charisma racial bonus and fey ancestry.

At this point, I could probably restore Karlach as a barbarian and make Wyll a ranger. I like rangers because of the tactical options provided by pets. Particularly birds, because of how few enemy types are immune or resistant to being blinded. Plus, birds can cover ground quickly by flying, without using up an action. It’s effectively a teleport that you can use every round.

Playing without a pure offensive caster seemed crazy at first, but it’s going all right on the standard difficulty. Shadowheart’s light domain spells fill in a surprising number of gaps – and they are particularly effective in Act 2, which is where I’m at now.

The nice thing is, if I change my mind, reclassing is pretty inexpensive. Unlike many other games of this type, the price does not scale with the number of times you do it, or with character level, or anything else. It’s always 100 gold.

Funny how Firefox can be at least as secure without it having to phone home every time you click on a link.

Usually when this happens, we call it spyware, nuke it from orbit, and find an alternative.

Decades of pervasive propaganda across multiple mediums, coupled with a systematic assault on public education and the very concept of critical thinking. The most noteworthy propagandists masquerade smugly under banners like “conspiracy theorist” or “patriot” rather than “liar” or “fascist.” They transformed the human-shaped turd Donald Trump into a folk hero, and they’re successfully pitching ordinary center-right statesman Joe Biden as a radical leftist.

I wonder if Donald Trump has ever washed a dish in his life. Or a piece of clothing. If he’s ever put a bag of trash in a trash can. Changed a light bulb. Boiled an egg. I don’t think he would even know how. He’s indicated at least once in interviews that grocery stores are completely unfamiliar to him. He literally doesn’t understand how they work. Food just materializes at his table, at the appointed time. Including his favorite, well-done steak slathered in ketchup.

I think if Donald Trump had to fend for himself for one week, even with a million dollars in a bank account, he would starve to death in dirty underwear. Yet about one half of America is convinced that he’s a man of the people who can relate to our daily struggles. Because of the machine.