#They are speaking about combat...

[retquits]

dragonsworn shapeshifter…. caldurus smoocher?

YESSSS... i knew from the start i wanted a caldarus romance file, and anyone familiar with my stardew files knows i loooove a cryptid farmer (¬ᴗ¬)✧

so!! ciro is a thrill-ride pretty boy - silver haired and silver tongued (although sometimes when he's performing tasks, townsfolk swear it looks more... purple). he made a deal with a dragon to grant him shapeshifting powers to get him out of a tough spot

...what dragon he's sworn to, though, will have to be decided later 😏 it'll depend on how fields of mistria's story develops!

[anghraine]

It's honestly kind of funny to me that catapulting into Kirk/Spock shipping has launched my usual "meh, not into jealousy as a metric of romantic love" shipping tendency out the window and instead I'm genuinely charmed by the extent to which they reflect the same unhealthy seething jealousy.

This is most obvious with Spock, but you'll get McCoy joking about Spock falling in love with a computer (not an android, a stationary computer) and McCoy being A Normal Guy Joking About His Friend Having a Hobby is immediately contrasted with Kirk's barely repressed jealousy (you can all but see him thinking "time to talk another computer to death" while McCoy just laughs at his own joke about it). Kirk gets more and more generally insecure until Spock publicly declares that, while he does like an efficient computer, Kirk is irreplaceable and he doesn't want to serve anyone or anything else, and Kirk looks like he's about to kiss him on the bridge.

(Kirk still talks the computer to death, btw, for plot reasons. But big "Edith Keeler must die" energy.)

I also enjoy Kirk's horror/outrage at Leila Kalomi and her obvious gloating over "taking" Spock from him in the docility sex pollen episode and Kirk's willingness to do or say anything to get Spock back vs Spock bleeding intensity throughout "Requiem for Methuselah" as Kirk falls in love with Rayna, then Spock numbly listening to McCoy's speech about how he can never understand the glories or agonies of romantic love triangles or passionate love before waiting for him to leave and then wiping Rayna from Kirk's mind. Just two bros who are totally normal about each other!

[kirkwallguy]

sorry thinking about this because of a reddit post (never a good sign lol) but the fact that da2 and dav actually have really similar approaches to romance but one works well and the other falls completely flat needs to be studied. i think the issue is that even though you could argue they have similar levels of content (no repeatable kisses, only a handful of cutscenes), da2 hides bits and pieces of extra development in its quests that make the chosen romance feel like it has a presence in hawke's life, while dav romances feel almost like they disappear whenever a scene isn't specifically about the companion / romance. tiny moments like aveline judging hawke on their choice of partner or the romanced companion comforting hawke after leandra's death all add up to make it feel more significant and constant throughout the game. if you're lucky with dav's romances you'll get a banter and an extra cutscene but the time between locking in and the cutscenes in act three gets EXTREMELY dry.

[ranger-danger]

In honor of Kane getting a Wyrmling as a familiar in my current dnd campaign. I like the light on it.

[deepwoundsandfadedscars]

When a character has the most intriguing backstory and piques your interest but you haven't even gotten to see the character fight

[stormbreaker101]

W101's Advanced Combat 103: Clears, Gambits, and School Synergy

Over the past few years, Wizard101 has been trying to add more variety to gameplay by introducing Advanced Combat, which focuses less on raw damage and more on hanging effects, the additional ‘things’ that can be present in battle.

In my last post on this series I introduced the theory of School Identity and the Roshambo wheel, using metaphor and the conceptual identities and themes of the schools to explain the relationships between them. This post will demonstrate how the Roshambo is used in combat, using many spell examples.

Clears

Clears allow you to remove hanging effects that benefit your opponent to get something that benefits yourself. Let's look at two examples of Ice school Clears.

This example Clear is from the Arc 2 prequest's tutorial. It can clear a Charm because Charms are representative of Storm, and Ice freezes Storm.

And this B Path Evil Snowman is able to clear Curses because Curses are representative of Death, and Ice survives Death.

Sometimes, you'll have spells that have their Clear condition after doing their damage, rather than before, such as in this example below. As a reminder, Storm can clear DoTs because DoTs are representative of Fire, and Storm douses Fire.

Gambits

Gambits are the opposite of Clears. They let you sacrifice something that benefits yourself for another thing that benefits yourself. This can be a stronger hanging effect, higher damage, or pips.

Wait, that last example seems odd. It's a Death spell, but instead of gambiting or casting a Curse (which is its representative hanging effect), it's gambiting Charms (which represents Storm) and recieving Wards (which represents Ice). What's going on here?

School Synergy

Schools are not only able to counter one another, but synergize with one another, using the hanging effects of other schools in their own spells. Specifically, schools can synergize with the other schools adjacent to them.

Death is in between Ice and Storm, and so it can synergize with those two schools. Death spells can gambit or produce curses, wards, or charms. Weaknesses, Shields, or Blades.

While the official concept of School Synergy and using it with the roshambo system is relatively new, there are some examples of older spells that display Synergy as well.

These are a pair of old Fire school spells, and they fully display all the synergies Fire has within Advanced Combat. Damage over Times (Fire itself) and Heal over Times (Life) in Link, and Jinxes (Myth) in Fuel.

In my eyes, Synergy isn't just a brand new system meant to make the schools more interconnected and able to interact with each other, but expanding upon older mechanics and lore to make it more thorough.

What About Balance?

As mentioned near the end of the last post, Balance sits within the School wheel, not countering and not countered by anything. Additionally, because Balance is in the center, it's adjacent to all the schools, and able to synergize with everything.

Thus, instead of Clearing or Gambiting anything, some B-Path Balance spells have a unique mechanic called Echo. If your opponent has a certain hanging effect active, your spell will give you the same kind of hanging effect without removing theirs.

Other Key Terms

There are some spells that don't include Gambits, Clears, or Echoes, but still lean into the roshambo and the concepts of Synergy, or just provide additional utility. As an example, often times DoTs HoTs and Bombs won't be officially gambited, but some spells will trigger a secondary effect of some kind if a DoT or Bomb is on your target, or if an HoT is on you. Most can be understood just by reading the symbols, but some use additional terms that I haven't yet covered and so I'll cover them here.

Detonate: Deal all of the damage in a single DoT or bomb

Activate: Deal all of the healing in a single HoT. A HoT detonate, essentially.

Swap: Trade one of your hanging effects with one of your opponent's hanging effects of the same time. (E.G., swap 1 of your charms with your target's charms) (Exercise for the reader: find the spell that has this effect.)

Push: Put one of your hanging effects onto your target.

[suckitphaneuf]

the princess makeup option in the 7B update reminded me of My Hollywood Story (negative) 💔💔

[icewindandboringhorror]

One of the interesting bits of trying to resume working on the game after so long is looking back at my ancient Draft Placeholder versions of an image from 4 yrs ago trying to remember what the hell I meant back then, to hopefully interpret it into some more final (ish..) form of the same thing .. making slow progress lol

[unityrain24]

just saw a post talking about the trope in media where like all blind characters have like some special power or something where they can see some other way and they are never allowed to just be truly blind. and i was like yeah that's a pretty good point and this is a pretty good post- and then i get to the bottom of the post and it says "🔪 Sighted People MUST Reblog This 🔪" (but in the bigger text) are you fucking me???

[divine-motion]

i already knew the secret level armored core episode wasn't gonna be good (keanu reaves go die in a hole genocide endorsing piece of shit) but man. it sure was just a whole lot of nothing and annoying "look this looks just like how it looks in the video game!!" type shots

[intern-seraph]

so now that there has been a spike in antisemitic hate crimes (in some areas rising over 1000%), synagogues have been vandalized, firebombed, and literally razed, jews have been assaulted in public, jewish businesses have been vandalized, jewish homes and businesses have been marked with the star of david, and a man broke into his jewish neighbor's home intending to murder the entire family for being jewish, are we gonna get an apology from the people who were mocking jews for being afraid of an increase in antisemitism after oct. 7th?

(this is, of course, a rhetorical question. we all know that those people never cared about jews.)

[a-grayscale-galaxy]

Trying to do work but can't stop breaking into giggles about Wanda Childa's (RECENT!) ex, fantasy Pete Wents.

[forest-wolfie]

Hey madness community, I have some food for thought.

Why don’t we ever give our shipping pairs really cool ship names instead of mushing the two character names together? I think we could do something silly like the TF2 community does where the ship names relate to the characters.

Like for Sanford and Deimos for example, instead of Sanmos (which is alright on its own) why not call it something like Smoke Bombs? Or even for like Jeb and Hoffnar, they could be called Lab Partners. I think we could create some fun names for shipping pairs.

I wanna see this for OC x canon too, I absolutely wanna hear some silly ship names you have for your OC dating a canon character. For mine (Scorpio x Doc) I’d call them Pork Stitches. Pork being pulled from the fact Scorpio is a cannibal (cannibals nickname human flesh long pork) and Stitches from Doc yknow being a “doctor.”

Also feel free to just rb this post with like ideas or thoughts on this concept because I think it would be super fun to see. I wanna know what others think about this. :3

[thespookywoods]

Somehow i will convince more people to play Rogue Trader. Its like if BG3 was grim dark scifi (aka its also a CRPG) and everyone was a worse person

[serach-bat-asher]

i feel like a lot for me is clicking and i just can't with the AZ world anymore. the response to the p*ger thing has been balls to the walls insane