I take every opportunity to pick up new bestiaries from Legendary Games whenever they come out. They’ve done books based off of Latin Amerian monsters and myths, African monsters and myths, Asian monsters and myths, and Mediterranian monsters and myths. The books aren’t huge or anything, but they come with a good range of cultural creatures that I have little to know knowledge of, and which feel very distinct from the western fantasy canon.
I like Trilium Notes. It’s rich text based, not markdown based, but haas most of the organiation structures of Obsidian. It doesn’t have the user base nor volume of plugin support, though. It does have a canvas mode for inking, but it’s a separate note type, not part or every note.
For a purer inking environment, look at Xournal++. It’s not as feature rich as OneNote, but it has the basics.
Or, you could try running OneNote with WINE. It looks like you’d have to use OneNote 2010 or 2013, though.
“Balance” gets abused a lot, as a term. It means multiple things, and it results in people talking past each other.
Intra-party balance – that is, everyone in the party being approximately equally capable – is important for most tables because most people resent getting clowned on by their so-called allies.
Creature/encounter balance is not about forcing the fights players get into to be fair, but about having a reliable way of telling how hard the fight will be. That knowledge is not an obligation to make the fights fair.
That’s dying. Bleeding out. It’s not even necessarily truly unconscious (even if it is Unconscious).
Trolls are only common if they’re made common, though. Like, they’re common in the Forgotten Realms, or Golarion, or whatever, but commonality is out the window in a homebrew setting.
“Don’t worry, it’s just a name!”
Gets attacked by trolls.
“I thought it was just a name!”
In Narrarive Declaration’s Kingmaker 2e actual play campaign, their necromancer invites people to sign contracts to be brought back as thralls after they die, because informed concent is leagues better than doing it without concent.
Plus, he promises them health and dental.
It’s really easy so long as you a) start at level 1 or 2 and avoid building out too far ahead, b) build to a character concept rather than try to optimize mechanically, c) avoid options released in adventures. Oh, and d), understand that retraining is actually baked into the rules.
Adventure character content is less rigorously tested, and mostly amounts to professional homebrew. It’s often super focused on the scenarios presented in the adventute and significantly less applicable in general.
Focusing on mechanical optimjzation rather than character concept often leads to madness, since feats are generally well placed within the same power bands (there are few stand out or trap options). For a crunvhy game, it’s often best played descriptively.
Characters become mechanically more complex every level or two, so starting at higher levels can be very overwhelming for new players. Building out a higher level character means choosing a lot of feats, and often the utility of those feats is only really understood through play.
The grey one was the earlier model. You gotta get in on those mid-generation upgrades!
Shit, Succubus crit succeeded their Recall Knowledge check
Just downgrades the results a step, so it’s Oops, All Hits rather than Oops, All Crits.
I wonder if the upcoming release of SF2e opens the door a little more? Instead of “this is different, let’s try it” it can be framed more as “I’m excited about this new thing, want to indulge me?”
And then suddenly, Skittermanders everywhere!
The game isn’t balanced around multiclassing, either. If it were, everyone and there dog wouldn’t have difficult to explain backgrounds that involve blood magic, mysterious patrons, and devout faith in something.
No, the idea is that 4e basically imploded the brand, so they pushed some unfinished stuff out the door before the axe came down and suddenly and unexpectedly they discovered that the brand was printing money.
Rules aren’t restrictive, because every rule is optional. A lack of guidance is WotC asking you to do their work for them.
Retconing things to protect muh precious twists is not compelling, though, it’s just base metagaming. The unwavering plot is the GM equivalent of the 8 page main character syndrome PC backstory. If I found out my GM was doing that, they wouldn’t be my GM anymore.
Way to unlovk splash damage as the new Battleship meta
Because most people are not so anal retentive as to give a damn about Hasbros trademarks.
There’s nothing secret about it. They told us up front.
It’s why I stopped using Windows.
I regretfully cannot attend, the kid from Air Bud just shit the bed.