I don’t think they are worse, they just do less damage. A lot of the value of ranged combat depends on the map layout, if there are places to take cover, choke points, difficult terrain. And also it requires coordination with the rest of the party to be very effective, if everyone grabs a ranged weapon they can shot at enemies while they get close, then switch to melee when they are in reach.

It’s been a while since I played 5e, but if I remember correctly you could do some fuckery with Haste and/or Sorcery Points if you don’t follow that rule.

Interesting, I didn’t know that. My Starfinder lore is pretty lacking since I don’t play it.

If Shelyn is out, I don’t know where to place my bet, the rest seems equally likely to me.

Most of the core deities are in Starfinder, so I think we can discard them. Maybe they get revived or Starfinder is an alternate timeline but I’m not going to assume that.

That leaves 9 deities: Erastil, Gorum, Gozreh, Irori, Nethys, Norgorber, Rovagug, Shelyn, Torag.

I think some of those have explanations of why they aren’t in Starfinder. Torag I remember reading is guarding Golarion, wherever the planet is. Rovagug is either The Devourer or still inside Golarion. Gozreh is specifically a Golarion deity, so he/she is almost certainly still there. Erastil really doesn’t fit Starfinder setting, so I think he is still around, but probably the people that worship him are not traveling in starships. Gorum and Nethys seem to be like weird choises to kill off, I don’t think they are part of any current storyline and I can’t really see the god of magic that knows everything dying, same with the god of war though he might enjoy that. Similarly with Irori and Norgorber, I don’t think they dying would be dramatic enough.

So my bet is on Shelyn, it will probably involve Zon-Kuthon. And we already have the perfect replacement for the deity of art I think, Nocticula.

It’s not a problem for a videogame, but D&D5e (actually most D&D editions) is not a balanced game at all. In fact the only RPG that I’ve played and would call balanced is Pathfinder 2e.

So I was not expecting Baldur’s Gate to be balanced at all given it’s based on D&D5e.

Really depends on what level you are playing, I like Graveknights, pair them with a lich or a vampire, and a bunch skeletons and zombies fodder and you have a great boss battle.

Call it the Mathfinder System, embrace the meme.

I like the idea of a mounted archer, I tried it with a gnome druid on a llama. I could have build him a ranger but I wanted to take Eldrich Archer later on. He was pretty effective, with the llama speed he kept out of range and could damage with the bow or spells. Sadly that campaign didn’t last long, so my experience is from the first 3 or 4 levels.

A similar idea I have now that Guns & Gears gave us the gunslinger is making a dragoon inspired character. No, not the Final Fantasy class, the historical mounted infantry unit. I would probably make him a spellslinger and maybe a beast gunner since I like casters.

I really like the rule in theory, but I haven’t got the chance to actually try it. I blame FoundryVTT not having it as an option, but if I really wanted it I could contribute to the project 🤷

I feel that as a martial you really want STR and CON, but both are not a priority for a ranged character, so it makes sense to me to combine them. Also it always bothered me that CON doesn’t has any skill attached.

DEX is not the god stat that it is in other D&D systems, but is still pretty strong being both a defensive and offensive stat. I think the alternative rule also makes it so you add DEX to damage? So it’s both a nerf and a buff, DEX martials no longer care about STR… Except they do because it now gives HP.

Charisma being the stat for Will makes sense from a “narrative” perspective, since CHA is supposed to be your force of personality ans whatnot. It’s a nerf to WIS though, and I don’t feel that WIS is that strong… PF2e made Perception it’s own thing, which I think was a good change since everybody wanted Perception/Sense Motive anyway, and I always thought it was overcomplicated that there were two skills about detecting stuff (nevermind D&D5e adding Investigation too…). But I think most people value WIS because they value Initiative, and I feel like it’s pretty underwhelming. It feels pretty bad for that it basically only matters in the first round of combat, so it can give you what’s effectively an extra turn, but that still doesn’t feel like a lot to me. I would pair the Alternative Ability Score rule with another homerule that is “roll initiative again each round”. To be fair I haven’t tried that one either, the concern is that it could make combat a slog, but in my experience PF2e combat rounds can go pretty quickly once the party gets into “rhythm”. And in any case, making a macro for that should be pretty easy.

So yeah, I plan to use it whenever I start another campaign, along with basically all the other variant rules (Gradual Ability Scores, Proficiency Without Level, Automatic Bonus Progression, Free Archetype, and Ancestral Paragon. No Dual Class because, while I love it in theory, the campaign where I’ve tried it is pretty wack with the power level of some PCs).

Feinting or Demoralising as a first action are pretty good, you can only demorilise each enemy once per combat though. Also, you say moving is obvious, but you mean approaching the enemy? Because attacking twice and then moving away can be a good way to not get hit or making a boss waste an action (though beware attacks of opportunity, in which case step exists).

Lore questions? Of course!

• Elemental Lords: Are they still either good or evil with the removal of alignment? I’m not sure if they are making any changes to the edicts/anathema, but some currently evil deities could be played by good characters if not for the alignment restriction, same for the lawful-chaotic axis. Also, we have 4 new Elemental Lords, right? Are they cool?
• Other deities: Are there more/new elemental deities aside from the Elemental Lords?
• Geography: Any cities mentioned in the book? Places where planes meet, forming “quasi planes”? Any ‘weird’ environments mentioned in the planes?

The new class, it’s about using one or multiple elements. It’s not a spellcaster with spellslots though, think of it more in line with an Avatar character.

Multiple reasons to be hyped, some folks liked the kineticist from 1e, others want a “spellcaster” that’s not a vancian caster. I just really like the theme of controlling the elements.

Monsters can use skills too, so look at what skills they have and what basic/trained actions they have access to. Disarm is a joke until an enemy disarma the fighter and then attacks their sword, destroying it (since it’s an unattended object). Also, your players might hate you if you do that.

Move around, if you are going to make a 3rd strike it’s probably better to move away unless the player has an Attack of Opportunity or similar, and even then you can just step away.

Use terrain more. The mosters are usually on the defensive in my games, so they might have traps, advantageous terrain, etc. If the enemies are shooting from a balcony then they are not in melee range, and probably can Take Cover each round. If the usually melee PCs made the mistake of not carrying a ranged weapon they’ll need to either find the stair up or climb which is not ideal.

Use (magical/alchemical) items! There’s quite a long list of them and I feel they are underused in the game, my players at least have this “I might need it later” mentality, specially (but not only!) towards consumables. I personally blame Final Fantasy for that, oh well.

Basically any advice that works for the PCs is going to work for the enemies tactics-wise.

What I’m wondering is go fat would that go. You could have an instance that defederates from an instance because it’s federated with another instance that is federated with Meta. And so on and so forth. To me that will just create a group of instances that aren’t federated with anything else…

“Spirit damage” would be the substitute for positive damage, maybe? I don’t remember that being a damage type.

If want a deadly encounter you might want to consider an Extreme (party level + 4) encounter instead of a Severe (party level + 3) one.

In any case, a Moon Hag (level 10) might be what you want, or you can use it for comparison with the one you created.

There’s !genworldbuilding but there are only 2 posts so far. Most of the discussion here seem to be around the Pathfinder systems, which makes sense given the name of the instance.