cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/20694686

u/corsica1990 over on th'other site posted a survey a few days ago, trying to figure out how easily people could intuit creatures' worst saving throws (Fortitude, Reflex, or Will) based on just the creature's name and bestiary art.

How'd you do? Also, will you, too, forever have nightmares about jellyfish clam squids? Because I ain't ever unseeing that.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/19889099

So, over on the subreddit there's a post that caught me off guard. I'm not experienced enough with the game to know the ins-and-outs of all of classes, so when someone posted asking about Ruffian Rogues and Picks.

From the comments, this appears to be a Thing of Great Contention within the Pathfinder space (or, at least within that Pathfinder space; I find r/Pathfinder2e to be a rather... idiosyncratic place, personally).

The long and short of it is that Picks have the Fatal d10 trait, but Ruffian specifies:

You can deal sneak attack damage with any weapon, not just the weapons listed in the sneak attack class feature. This benefit doesn't apply to a simple weapon with a damage die greater than d8 or a martial or advanced weapon with a damage die greater than d6. (Apply any abilities that alter the damage die size first.)

(Emphasis mine.)

A lot of words have been published over how the Ruffian doesn't lose Sneak Attack on a critical hit, but this seems pretty straight forward from the text here that it does. Weird and stupid, and something I'd never personally enforce, but clear and straight forward nonetheless.

This is the updated wording from Player Core 1, no less, and Ruffian's text was updated in the remaster, so there was an opportunity to reword or clarify that was not taken, so I'm not sure what others are reading from this that I'm not.

How do you interpret this situation? How would you judge it at your table?

Hey everyone, just an update to my last post from Sunday night.

The eclipse went off without a hitch -- thankfully, I am not personally capable of interfering with celestial events -- and I have to say, nothing could have ever possibly prepared me for the experience. No photo has ever actually captured what I saw Monday afternoon. I don't think any of them have come close.

Picture of my own attached for total lack of effect.

As I looked down at my camera screen and watched the last light of the crescent Sun disappear from my view, I felt totality occur. The umbra of the Moon swept over me while I looked down, and the world got noticeably chilly. The wind died down. The world was silent for a hiccup. I immediately and excitedly looked up, and I think my brain broke.

Hovering in the sky over Potato World was an black, alien orb, surrounded by a thin ring of brilliant white and pink shimmering fire. It was something straight out of a science fiction movie, and not necessarily a good one, either. It looked so incredibly fake.

It looked downright cartoony.

And it hit me like a ton of bricks. I wept as I stared at it, completely unable to maintain composure. I gawked at how bright the solar corona actually was -- I had completely expected to have to strain to see it. I marveled as I realized I was seeing, with my own two, naked eyes, solar prominences arching over the limb of the Moon. And I just sobbed through the whole experience.

My fiancee, whose interest in this had seemed to be primarily a mix between modest curiosity in a significant natural and cultural event and support for my interest, also cried at seeing it, while her son sat on the ground with his mouth hanging open.

It was both the longest and the shortest 3 minutes of my life. When it was over, I just stood in the field in a daze, periodically pressing my camera's shutter button. In just a few minutes following the end of totality, the field, in which hundreds of people had gathered, was nearly empty. Only a handful of us remained, and most of the others had heavier equipment than my DSLR and tripod.

At the end of the day, I didn't quite get the pictures I wanted. I had hoped to get bracketed exposures during totality, and I had assumed that my camera's settings for that when using the LCD display as digital viewfinder would be the same as when using the optical viewfinder, and they weren't. But I'm not too fussed about it. The pictures still turned out significantly better than I could have hoped for.

I'll be posting the rest of my photos -- including some pictures of Potato World itself -- to my PixelFed account, which can be found here, if anyone's interested: https://pixey.org/i/web/profile/384533916920271164

I'm sitting in a dark hotel room on the eve of my first - and possibly only - total solar eclipse, with my partner and step-son, and I am positively awash with emotions.

I have been waiting for this day for 30 years, since my first partial eclipse in May of 1994. That was an underwhelming experience for many reasons, but not the least of them was that I had nothing and no one to view the eclipse with.

Three decades, two astronomy degrees, 5 years operating a planetarium, and 5 years as a guide at the local observatory later, and I'm fully prepared. Today, I have more viewing glasses than i have fingers, two cameras with filters, I have my family, and I am smack dab in the middle of the path of totality.

And the forecast calls for clear skies.

I can't believe it. I can't believe that this is actually happening for me. That everything looks like it's going to work out.

The only disappointment is that I discovered that Potato World exists - it's the New Brunswick potato museum (and it's next door to my hotel) - but it's closed!

Xalchs just posted this to Reddit, announcing the launch of a new website hosting their Pf2e compatible item cards. There's currently 40 available, but they're apparently planning to expand the deck to 200 over 2024.

Spoiler Warning: Contains unmasked spoilers for the first encounter of The Longnight Before Krampus

My sister-in-law and niece are staying with us over the holidays, and truth be told, we don't reeeaaaaally have the space to house guests. We just have the most space of anyone in my partner's family. Partially because of this (and partially because the next generation of my partner's family is entirely comprised of only children who have apparently finally started to reach the "WTF is 'sharing'" phase of being only children), there have been some conflicts between the chilluns under my roof this week, particularly when it has come to unstructured play.

So, I thought, maybe tonight was the time to bust out some structured, non-denominational, solstice-adjacent winter holiday themed play! I had The Longnight Before Krampus printed off and ready to go and asked the wee warriors if they wanted to roll some dice. With the other adults in the room busy with holiday baking (I'm off of food prep this year, due to everyone else using my kitchen), and having shouldered more of the youngun refereeing than me (I was out all afternoon running errands), I didn't think anyone else would have the bandwidth for a game, so I thought it would be a relatively rigid affair. You know, the kind of thing that I could control to the point where two pre-teens would tolerate it, because someone was actively entertaining them, but stay in their lane, because I'm a large, loud guy who's often quick to say 'no'.

So anyway, the party of 5 walk into the inn on a cold, dark, storm winter's night, and both kids immediately start to shout over me.

Well... shit.

"I put out a cup and start painting a picture!" cries out the visiting kid, playing a wild order woodland elf druid with an art degree.

"I put out a cup and..." my step-son -- playing a storm order woodland elf druid -- yells his attempt at further mimicking his older cousin cut off by the big, mean game master.

"What are you painting on?"

"I don't know. The wall?" she says, almost confused by the question.

"You see the innkeeper approach quickly. She has a stern, if somewhat surprised, look on her face."

"Uhhh, I meant a piece of paper."

"I put out a cup and start doing magic card tricks!" my step-son yells out again, trying to assert his copy-cattery.

"Do you cast any spells?"

"No."

"Both of you roll perf..."

"I come over and start playing my lute," interjects the bard, played by the older child's mother.

"Ok, I'll need performance checks from all of you," I inform them as I secretly roll a d10. The first pages of the adventure introduce a bevy of triggers for the first encounter, the suddenly most appreciated one being "if no one triggers it within 10 minutes". A mixed set of performance rolls nets them a couple of coins, and nets me one step-son asking every 30 seconds if he can re-roll his failed check.

The adventure actually prompts the GM to hand out hero points after each encounter, so I didn't start the party with any (thinking they'd have one in short order, and that it would feel better getting one as a victory prize). It was around this point where I started regretting that decision.

While the merry band of uninvited buskers do their thing, the party's Oracle -- played by my partner, and the mother of the mother of the already tilted younger druid -- decides to talk to the innkeeper. She orders a drink and starts to ask her a question when the elder cousin suddenly screams out, "I seduce the innkeeper!"

With seemingly everyone else in the room distracted, the Rogue Thief does a circuit around the room, easily picking every pocket they come across.

I roll the d10 again. It comes up as a 3.

The Bard, suddenly freed from her sense of obligation to spotlight her little one, looks around the room and sees the innkeeper's son looking longingly at the ever shortening candle on the fireplace mantle, as he waits for the moment where he can open the mystery boxes under the ~~Christmas~~ Longnight tree. So, using her foot, she slides one of them across the room to him.

"Oh thank the gods," I think to myself. Touching one of the presents is an encounter trigger.

"I need everyone in the room to give me a perception check," I inform them. Most of them roll pretty low. Meanwhile, the evil poppet inside the box rolls a massive deception roll for their initiative, and looks like a regular windup toy to everyone. Only the thief takes notice of it at all, amused by how it seemingly is heading back to under the tree, where it just was.

I turn to my step-son and ask him what he wants to do. His cousin excitedly leans in front of him and starts yelling again, but I cut her off and inform her that it's not her turn yet. I repeat my question.

"I go over to [Bard] and point the toy bear out to them," he says.

"Ok, that's your first action. What else do you do?"

"Wait, we're in combat?"

"No, but we are in encounter mode. All that means it that the order in which everyone does things matters. You have two actions left."

He spends another action pointing the walking doll out to everyone else, and then finishes his turn off finally re-rolling for his card trick.

The Oracle goes next, but she pays little attention to the transpiring events. Instead, she spends an action to talk to my step-son, and to drop a silver coin into his cup, before turning back to the inn keeper to ask her about renting a room for the night.

Next, the Rogue starts investigating the doll. A middling crafting check informs them that this thing doesn't look like something that should be able to walk on its own. Also, who wound it up? They pick the bear up, only to have it squirm out of their grip. The Bard comes over to try grabbing it, and rolls high on their grapple attempt. They look closely at the bear and discover that it spells of black powder, and seems to have ill intentions.

The elder druid throws her dagger at the bear -- and her mother -- landing a critical blow. She then walks over to the window and opens it.

The bear tries to break free, but fails its saves.

Now the younger druid, who I foolishly allowed to have a jezail because I'm that dumb, turns his rifle on the bear -- and the Bard. At this point the Rogue -- his other bio parent -- points out that someone is holding the bear, and that he'll end up shooting them, too, he instead turns to them and says "I'll shoot you, then".

Nice, quiet, structured play. That's what this'll be.

They did, eventually, win the encounter. And somehow, no one got shot, despite multiple threats -- it turns out the over-tired ten-year-old competing for the spotlight is very sensitive to being told he'd have to relabel his character as chaotic evil if he shot any of his teammates. But yeah, gonna keep a closer eye on that one before he succeeds in Marty Jannettying someone through a window.