rpg bionicjoey • 1mo ago • 94%

Just ran my first session of an OSR system and had a blast!

I recently heard about Mothership from some YouTubers and decided to run a one-shot for a couple of guys in my Pathfinder 2e group. I was really impressed by the way that a more rules-light system naturally encourages more player engagement and creativity. We will probably end up playing a lot more of it in the future.

Dungeons and Dragons bionicjoey • 2mo ago • 94%

D&D 2024 PHB's Big Accessibility Issues

This guy breaks down just how bad the layout of the new PHB is. The cross referencing is non-existent and the subsections seem to go in the order someone thought of them. I'm sadly unsurprised that they've not improved on any of these problems which existed in the original 5e PHB.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/26511521 > So, if you're unaware, the basic math of PF2e's armour items assumes that for light and medium armour, `(item bonus + dex cap) = 5`, and for heavy armour, `= 6`. This means that as long as you can pick an armour that has a lower dex cap than your dex bonus, you are expected to be getting either 5 or 6 AC from your armour. > > With all that said, there are a ton of armours out there that offer some kind of tradeoff, where that formula doesn't hold. For example, the Armoured Coat gives +4 AC between item bonus and dex cap, but it has the flexible trait which negates the check penalty to athletics and acrobatics checks. In my mind, that's a crazy tradeoff to make. The extra AC is so much more important. > > At the end of the day though, I don't have the time to analyze the tradeoff offered by all of these "sub-optimal" armours. So yeah, I'd love to hear if anyone has experience with an armour item that yields less than 5 AC (or 6 for heavy armour) and yet the tradeoff was actually worth it for them.

Pathfinder 2e bionicjoey • 2mo ago • 100%

Are there any armours that give suboptimal AC that you consider worthwhile?

So, if you're unaware, the basic math of PF2e's armour items assumes that for light and medium armour, `(item bonus + dex cap) = 5`, and for heavy armour, `= 6`. This means that as long as you can pick an armour that has a lower dex cap than your dex bonus, you are expected to be getting either 5 or 6 AC from your armour. With all that said, there are a ton of armours out there that offer some kind of tradeoff, where that formula doesn't hold. For example, the Armoured Coat gives +4 AC between item bonus and dex cap, but it has the flexible trait which negates the check penalty to athletics and acrobatics checks. In my mind, that's a crazy tradeoff to make. The extra AC is so much more important. At the end of the day though, I don't have the time to analyze the tradeoff offered by all of these "sub-optimal" armours. So yeah, I'd love to hear if anyone has experience with an armour item that yields less than 5 AC (or 6 for heavy armour) and yet the tradeoff was actually worth it for them.

Pathfinder 2e bionicjoey • 3mo ago • 92%

The biggest loss IMO of the Remaster

The NPC gallery from the legacy GMG wasn't reprinted in GMC. No more generic "bandit" "mad scientist", "assassin", "priest", "necromancer", "gang leader" These had a lot of value for telling the sort of stories I like to tell in my games, which are less about killing unequivocally evil "monsters" and more about regular people who may be morally complex and provoke more interaction from the players. I'm well aware one can simply use legacy content, but that ignores that some of these had mechanics that have been revised in the remaster, and they were an important part of the toolkit provided to GMs in the GMG. Right now, the GM Core feels very lacking in terms of providing support for creating a cast of NPCs in adventures. There's literally a half a page dedicated to NPCs and it basically just says "make 'em up". Saying "You can use legacy content" is not a valid point when these new books are supposed to serve as a foundation for the system standing on their own. Additionally, the official Paizo FoundryVTT bestiary portraits module, which I paid good money for, appears to have **removed** the portraits for these generic NPCs when the remaster content was added to the system. The realization of that was actually the thing that prompted this post. I was setting up an encounter for my players and was confused as to why the "Antipaladin" art was [this](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/74130268/201760433-b8cdecf1-957f-40b3-aaa9-4da3014952f9.png) instead of [this](https://2e.aonprd.com/Images/NPCs/Villain_Antipaladin.png). I am almost certain that before the remaster it used the art from the GMG for those tokens.

DM Academy bionicjoey • 3mo ago • 100%

Running a rival party of adventurers

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/25172652 > # Background: > > I'm running the Pathfinder 2e Abomination Vaults adventure for a group of 5 players, though I've set it in my own homebrew setting and have not shied away from deviating from the published adventure. I'll try not to, but I may let slip some minor AV spoilers > > The players have just reached the end of book 1, and are about to go into book 2. At this point, about a month of in-game time has passed since the adventure began, and one week into the adventure there was a big supernatural event which made big news around the town that the adventure is set in. I like to play up the verisimilitude of the setting by having NPCs and the world react to the things that happen, as well as to the passage of time. > > One thing I've come up with which I'm excited to see play out is that enough time has passed that word has spread around the local area about this megadungeon that has been discovered near the town. The players have been telling everyone who will listen about this heretofore undiscovered complex. In my mind, this would mean that other parties of adventurers would come to the town with the intent of doing the same thing the players are doing: looting dungeon, killing baddies, leveling up, getting rich and famous. > > I've created a rival party of five adventurers of the same level as the players. This rival party is called "The Vanguard Edge" (or simply "The Edge"). I've spent a chunk of the last few days making notes on how to RP and employ The Edge. Here's what I've got so far: > > > The party is likely to try to join forces with The Vanguard Edge. This should **never** be possible. > > > > The Edge don't follow the same rules as other NPCs. Think of them as a group of DM-controlled player characters. They know the rules of adventuring and they *think* like players. > > > > The Edge are not villains. They are fundamentally "good guys", but **their goal is to eat the party's lunch**. They want to go into the Abomination Vaults and find all the cool loot first > > > In general, the Edge fulfill the negative stereotypes that most people have of adventurers. They are demanding, dismissive, and arrogant. They flaunt their wealth and brag about their exploits, they get bored when they go too long without fighting something. They sometimes speak in slightly more metagame terms, such as talking about their hopes to "level up" and "gain experience". > > > If the party ever shares useful information with The Edge, they will look at it with some skepticism. The members of the Edge would never dream of sharing Intel with other adventurers. > > > The Edge will occasionally have reached certain places first. This should be used sparingly, and only when it is a real gut punch for the party. It should be easy to tell where they have been, because they are completely unsubtle in their approach to adventuring. > > > Sometimes the implication of treasure can be added to the adventure, but with the added implication that the Edge got to it first. Maybe Abomination Vaults doesn't explicitly mention treasure in some room, but there was some in there, and the Edge already took it. > > > If an encounter is about to turn into a TPK, the Edge can show up to save the PCs. But they will never let them live it down. > > --- > > Those are the notes I've made so far on how to use this new element of my campaign. I'm curious if anyone out there has any thoughts, either in things I've noted or things I've missed. I'd love folks to give their feedback > > Thanks in advance!

rpg bionicjoey • 3mo ago • 91%

Running a rival party of adventurers

# Background: I'm running the Pathfinder 2e Abomination Vaults adventure for a group of 5 players, though I've set it in my own homebrew setting and have not shied away from deviating from the published adventure. I'll try not to, but I may let slip some minor AV spoilers The players have just reached the end of book 1, and are about to go into book 2. At this point, about a month of in-game time has passed since the adventure began, and one week into the adventure there was a big supernatural event which made big news around the town that the adventure is set in. I like to play up the verisimilitude of the setting by having NPCs and the world react to the things that happen, as well as to the passage of time. One thing I've come up with which I'm excited to see play out is that enough time has passed that word has spread around the local area about this megadungeon that has been discovered near the town. The players have been telling everyone who will listen about this heretofore undiscovered complex. In my mind, this would mean that other parties of adventurers would come to the town with the intent of doing the same thing the players are doing: looting dungeon, killing baddies, leveling up, getting rich and famous. I've created a rival party of five adventurers of the same level as the players. This rival party is called "The Vanguard Edge" (or simply "The Edge"). I've spent a chunk of the last few days making notes on how to RP and employ The Edge. Here's what I've got so far: > The party is likely to try to join forces with The Vanguard Edge. This should **never** be possible. > > The Edge don't follow the same rules as other NPCs. Think of them as a group of DM-controlled player characters. They know the rules of adventuring and they *think* like players. > > The Edge are not villains. They are fundamentally "good guys", but **their goal is to eat the party's lunch**. They want to go into the Abomination Vaults and find all the cool loot first > In general, the Edge fulfill the negative stereotypes that most people have of adventurers. They are demanding, dismissive, and arrogant. They flaunt their wealth and brag about their exploits, they get bored when they go too long without fighting something. They sometimes speak in slightly more metagame terms, such as talking about their hopes to "level up" and "gain experience". > If the party ever shares useful information with The Edge, they will look at it with some skepticism. The members of the Edge would never dream of sharing Intel with other adventurers. > The Edge will occasionally have reached certain places first. This should be used sparingly, and only when it is a real gut punch for the party. It should be easy to tell where they have been, because they are completely unsubtle in their approach to adventuring. > Sometimes the implication of treasure can be added to the adventure, but with the added implication that the Edge got to it first. Maybe Abomination Vaults doesn't explicitly mention treasure in some room, but there was some in there, and the Edge already took it. > If an encounter is about to turn into a TPK, the Edge can show up to save the PCs. But they will never let them live it down. --- Those are the notes I've made so far on how to use this new element of my campaign. I'm curious if anyone out there has any thoughts, either in things I've noted or things I've missed. I'd love folks to give their feedback Thanks in advance!

Jerboa bionicjoey • 4mo ago • 100%

GIFs no longer play at all

I wasn't 100% sure this was a problem, as I had noticed a lot more people commenting what appeared to be static image responses to comments. But there's this thread: https://lemmy.world/post/16932878 which makes it easy to be sure that in fact they are definitely GIFs, and they don't play when you click on them. It just opens the first frame of the GIF like a static image.

Jerboa bionicjoey • 4mo ago • 100%

Same post appears multiple times in feed

I thought something was causing people to double post more recently, but after testing voting on some examples, I'm pretty sure posts are getting duplicated by the app.

Steam Deck bionicjoey • 5mo ago • 96%

Against The Storm looks like ass

The game seems to downscale and blur all textures, so the only thing that looks sharp is text and 3d models. Unfortunately some of the UI text seems to actually be a rendered texture, so the text of some UI elements can look blurry and pixelated. It also seems that the blurring is a live process, not a preprocess. This means that a lot of the UI elements are constantly flickering on top of being blurry. Overall I love the game FWIW. I picked it up this week and love the gameplay loop. I'm just amazed it gets the green checkmark despite having such glaring UI issues with the default graphics settings (which are ostensibly tailored to the Deck) Can anyone tell me if this can be fixed? Edit: I had half-rate shading turned on and didn't realize it. I'm an idiot.

Forum Libre bionicjoey • 6mo ago • 95%

On visite la France dans une semaine. Donnez moi vos avis de voyage

Moi, mon père, et mon frère vont visiter la nord pour deux semaines (le 28 avril - le 13 mai). On vient de Canada, et mes compagnons de voyage ne parlent pas le français. Mon père grandissait autour des franco-ontariens alors il comprend un peut, mais il ne peut pas le parler. Et mon frère n'a même pas pris les cours français de l'école secondaire, alors il comprend rien. Moi, je suis le seul membre du groupe qui peut avoir une conversation en français, grâce a mon poste au gouvernement fédéral. Mais je sais que le plupart des Français peuvent aussi parler l'anglais. Mais j'ai peur de se tutoyer par accident en parlent avec un Français, car on se tutoye beaucoup plus ici en Canada, et j'ai pas l'habitude de se vouvoyer. Je prévois demander beaucoup d'excuses pour me tromper. Notre plan de voyage c'est de visiter premièrement les endroits d'importance dans les deux guerres mondiales, mais aussi des belles villes et villages dans la region. On prévoit visiter Ypres (en Belgique), ~~Dunkirk, Calais~~, Arras/Vimy, Dieppe, Rouen, Le Havre/Honfleur, Caen/les plages Juno et Omaha, Rennes, et finalement Paris. On a déjà acheté les passes pour le chemin a fer, et c'est comme ça qu'on prévoit se déménager entre ces endroits. On ne prévoit pas louer un auto, mais je crois que toutes ces villes et villages soient assez accessible aux piétons et avec la transport publique. J'imagine que peut être vous avez des idées quand vous lisez cette itinéraire, alors donnez moi vos idées! Est-ce qu'il-y-a quelque part qu'il faut visiter qu'on manque dans l'itinéraire? Est-ce qu'il-y-a des "must-see" attractions qu'il faut visiter dans ces villes que j'ai listé? Ou, est-ce qu'il-y-a de l'info important pour savoir quand on voyage en France? Merçi en avance!

Privacy bionicjoey • 6mo ago • 95%

Safest way of using WeChat on Android?

I live in Canada. My girlfriend is Chinese (also living in Canada), and while we are able to communicate via SMS, her mobile carrier isn't the best, and so there have often been issues for us with regular texting. She expressed a strong preference to use WeChat, at least as a backup option for when texting fails us. While I have some pretty significant reservations, it's not the hill I want to die on. So my question is: what can be done to use WeChat without compromising my whole phone? I'm okay with it if our conversations aren't private, but I'd like to know that I'm not giving unfettered access to all of my phone's systems and data to the CCP. What can be done to limit the reach of this ubiquitous app on my device?

Android bionicjoey • 6mo ago • 85%

Safest way of using WeChat

I live in Canada. My girlfriend is Chinese (also living in Canada), and while we are able to communicate via SMS, her mobile carrier isn't the best, and so there have often been issues for us with regular texting. She expressed a strong preference to use WeChat, at least as a backup option for when texting fails us. While I have some pretty significant reservations, it's not the hill I want to die on. So my question is: what can be done to use WeChat without compromising my whole phone? I'm okay with it if our conversations aren't private, but I'd like to know that I'm not giving unfettered access to all of my phone's systems and data to the CCP. What can be done to limit the reach of this ubiquitous app on my device?

NoYank. Remove All American Media And Culture From Your Life bionicjoey • 8mo ago • 71%

🇨🇳🎥 第二十条 Article 20 - 2024

www.imdb.com

I 🇨🇦 went to see this movie last night with my girlfriend 🇨🇳. I'm pretty sure I was the only white guy in the theatre 😅 It's got an interesting tone, swinging between really funny and really serious very quickly. Sometimes you'll be raucously laughing at some goofy humour one second, and then something dark and heavy will happen and give you whiplash. In that sense, it felt a bit like a Wes Anderson film to me. The main source of comedy in the movie comes from the dynamic between the protagonist, his wife, and his coworker/ex-girlfriend. The wife plays up the "nagging wife" trope pretty perfectly, and contrasts the diligent coworker. At times it can be hard to tell if you're supposed to believe that the protagonist is a bumbling fool, or a competent investigator. In that sense, the comedy bits reminded me a lot of Steve Martin in the Pink Panther. The theme is interesting. It examines what the punishment should be for people who use what could be called "excessive force" in self defense. A bit high-minded at times and the ending felt a bit cheesy, but overall I liked he way the movie's core theme was repeated across many different subplots. Overall I think it's worth watching if you like comedy/drama.

Trees bionicjoey • 9mo ago • 76%

Best remedy after a really bad high?

Hi there, I'm not a member of this community (only a very sporadic user myself) but figured it would be a good place to ask this question. The TLDR version is: My lady friend OD'd on edibles and is still a bit sick a day and a half later, is there any good remedy to help her get back on her feet? Longer version below: The girl I'm seeing recently had a downright awful experience with weed. She hasn't ever used before (she tried smoking once but didn't inhale properly so no high), and I expect she probably won't try it again any time soon. On Friday night she was hanging out with some friends and decided to try an edible since her friends were having some. Her weed literacy isn't great, and she didn't know that edibles hit different, nor that they take a while to kick in. She was also on an empty stomach since we had a dinner date in a couple hours and she often skips lunch at work, and on top of all that she's on the smaller side, so less bodyweight. She only had a third of what her friends took, but ended up being super unwell. I'm talking throwing up multiple times, bad vibes (crying, saying she didn't want to go to sleep because she would die in her sleep), and acting irrational (kept trying to leave her friend's house because she didn't want to be late for our date). Her friends texted me from her phone as it was happening because she was insistent on leaving and they wanted to let me know it wasn't happening. I told them about the thing with black peppercorns and apparently that (plus telling her not to worry about standing me up) helped enough that they were able to get her to fall asleep. She ended up sleeping and being nauseous for basically the entire day yesterday and I only heard back from her this morning. Anyway, that's all just the loredump. My actual question is, is there anything that can be done to help someone feel better when they are recovering from OD'ing on edibles? She's still not feeling 100%, probably from throwing up and panicking so much. I know for someone who is badly hungover from alcohol there are all sorts of folk remedies that at least work as a placebo if not as an actual cure. Just wondering if there's some equivalent for weed. I want to do something nice for her since I think she must feel awful about missing our date.

techsupport bionicjoey • 9mo ago • 100%

Android phone receiving SMS late/out of order from iPhones

This started a few days ago. I've been getting texts from friends with iPhones in the wrong order, and seemingly they are getting mine late. So I texted a friend whose grandmother was in the hospital yesterday, and her conversation with me looked like this. These texts from her arrived around a minute apart each. I think the intended order of them is fairly obvious. It's worth noting that every time I send her a text, the read receipt line under the text shows a little clock for a few seconds or more, which I think means it hasn't been recieved by her phone yet. Also worth noting that I had a conversation using the same stock messaging app with my mom yesterday who has an android and I don't think we had any such issue, but that may have actually been RCS. Anyway, here's the example. It's not the only example I've had with her or with another iPhone-using friend in the past couple days. > Me: Hey, how's your day? Any updates about your grandma? > Her (a few hours later): I feel relieved > Me: does that mean you got good news? > Her: how was your day? > Her: yeah > Me: my day was good, (proceeds to describe what I did that day) > Her: my family feels relieved too > Me: what was the good news? Your grandma is okay? > Her: Hey $bionicjoey, I didn't get much sleep last night but I just heard that the doctors say my grandma is out of danger. Edit: I texted her last night saying something weird was going on after that exchange, and then this morning at about 7:30 AM I texted her saying "let me know as soon as you get this". She just texted me at 2:30pm saying "I just am just now seeing your texts"

Jerboa bionicjoey • 10mo ago • 91%

Feature request: hide downvoted posts

Back in my days on Reddit, my favourite feature was the ability to hide individual posts if I had downvoted them. It made it easy to hide things which I didn't want to see or felt shouldn't be seen