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Dustin Knight @kitsunewarlock.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

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Reposted by Mathfinder

Game Designer: "Awesome, this archetype gives you all these cool powers that'll have both combat & social encounter applications while sticking to a beloved theme!" Players: "But does it give me a bonus to hit?" I mean, I get it. I spend years writing a blog about it. But it still makes me laugh.

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Mathfinder @mathfinder.bsky.social · 23h

Me trying to get people to understand that Exemplar Dedication—while still out of line, mind you—is not just outright better than other good Dedications like Commander.

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Mathfinder @mathfinder.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I always find it funny that the 5E bounded accuracy article claimed that level-bounded math is inherently bad for verisimilitude.

Mathfinder @mathfinder.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

This weirdness caused the “Stunned glitch” which got errata’d recently! Pre-errata, if you became Stunned during your own turn (e.g. Forbidden Thought) you “can’t act” so your turn ends, and then on your next turn you count down the Stunned X. They changed that to count down immediately. 2/2

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Mathfinder @mathfinder.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

When you become Stunned 1, you actually can’t take Reactions or Free Actions until your turn begins and you lose that Stunned 1. This is a bit of a nested rule. The second sentence of Stunned is “you can’t act”, which seems like flavour but is actually rules text: 2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?I... 1/2

2e.aonprd.com

Step 2: Act - Rules - Archives of Nethys: Pathfinder 2nd Edition Database

You can use actions in any order you wish during your turn, but you have to complete one action or activity before beginning another; for example, you can't use a single action in the middle of perfor...

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Mathfinder @mathfinder.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Oh, does it say that? Could you link me where? I somehow missed that.

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Mathfinder @mathfinder.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

You should watch Mathfinder videos anyways! No, I’m not biased or anything, why do you ask?

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Mathfinder @mathfinder.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

The constant battle to pretend that we’re not playing a rules interpretation game, and that there can be such a thing as “more RAW” when it comes to vague rules is genuinely one of the most frustrating parts of online discourse.

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Mathfinder @mathfinder.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Today we talk encounter building for optimized parties in #pathfinder2e, with a special mention of Free Archetype in the final third. youtu.be/exfuas0PCJ8?...

youtu.be

CHALLENGING Optimized Parties in Pathfinder 2E

Mathfinder @mathfinder.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

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Today’s video is all the tools I do not leave home without, when playing in higher levels in #pathfinder2e! www.youtube.com/watch?v=lra1...

youtube.com

MASTERING high level Pathfinder 2E with SILVER BULLETS

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already view ALL rolls like this, only us crunchy folks have trouble with it. Tell a rules light player to “let the dice tell the story” and they’ll tell you that’s the bare minimum expectation. 3/3

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(3) he either didn’t study it or failed to remember anything, (4) he did a pretty bad job and misremembered a detail. It’s really just a clean way to avoid things like “my character studies all monsters so he knows everything about every monster” arguments. Ironically, rules light players 2/X

I like to view it almost like collapsing a state that’s in superposition before the roll is made. My character studies lots of monsters. Has he studied this specific one? The d20 determines which of the following for universes he’s in: (1) He studied this masterfully, (2) He studied it a bit, 1/X

Do Saves have DIMINISHING RETURNS in Pathfinder 2E???

Today’s #pathfinder2e video will be a short one. My saving throws video from a couple weeks back had one very frequently asked question: so I answer that! www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROf2...

youtube.com

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I did once get implicitly accused of metagaming for implying that player characters in D&D have object permanence so uh… maybe my player is right to be so worried. (This is not hyperbole)

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**Stamina I apologize to all the Draw Steel nerds out there.

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throat for allowing a series of well-placed Deception/Performance checks to split a 180 XP encounter into waves of 60 XP. Was told that it was “cheating” so egregious that it was akin to “just let the Bard seduce the dragon” lol. 2/2

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Sounds about right… I feel like a good chunk of online discourses don’t really understand that “roll a d20, add a relevant modifier the GM and you think applies, compare it to a DC the GM thinks applies” is actually the standard way to resolve all checks. I once had someone jump down my 1/2

just playing with popcorn initiative in the literal exact way that the designers were hoping you would! 4/4

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it being metagaming! Once he piped in during someone’s turn saying “not to metagame, but those 2 minions are low on HP and haven’t gone yet, if you focus fire then, Mathfinder won’t get and more turns for this round, and then it’ll come back to one of us”. Sir, you’re not metagaming, you’re 3/3

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predicated with an “I hope <very normal part of the game that everyone does> isn’t metagaming”, bro where is this coming from? Funny part is that he’s also one of the more creative and tactical players at the table, he comes up with some great ideas, he’s just constantly worried about about 2/X

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People whose main exposure to #TTRPG discourse comes from D&D 5E/5.5E Reddit takes are always so fun to watch because like… who hurt you? GMing for a table of newbies in Draw Steel, and one of them has some D&D experience from before. He seems SO worried about metagaming. Everything he does is 1/X

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Don’t forget the secret third option of the GM being flexible and accommodating, and the player rigidly rules lawyering themselves into a corner even when no rule exists that should be getting in their way.

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Haven’t watched any Paizo runs. Maybe I should! You got any examples of how their play differs from how people perceive it?

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40 is still way larger than I can handle unless I get a dining table the size of my living room 😭 What an odd design choice.

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Okay 30-50 squares makes the game basically unplayable in-person doesn’t it? Am I missing something. The largest map I own is 25x27 squares and any time I pull it out it basically takes up 90% of the table’s area (the rest is for dice, trays, laptops, sheets, etc).

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Oh got it, 20x20 is a “small” map in this context. How big are LANCER maps, out of curiosity? Are they just stupid large cause everyone has guns? (Also does this make the game less playable for in-person gamers?) 20x20 squares would be considered a fairly large map in D&D and Pathfinder. 😅

Huh, I didn’t know that about ICON! Is the game just much more melee focused? How do ranged characters do in that game?

Numbers manipulation is rarely ever the most interesting part of a well-designed game, imo. Both in Draw Steel and in PF2E, the numbers modification is mostly just because there’s no other way to represent certain abilities. But it’s not the main focus in either game.

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There’s also the unfortunate fact that a lot of people outside the community have no exposure to how the game plays except “every +1 matters”, which is… severely misunderstood. So people don’t talk about the insanely cinematic abilities and fun tactics, and instead think it’s just spreadsheets lol.

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Formalizing a notion of “dungeon turns” and a “Taking 20” rule would’ve gone a long way towards making exploration feel better overall, imo. I will die on the hill that a 5-minute dungeon turn is better than a 10-minute one though. More “resolution”, so to speak.

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I think this may be the case for the old hats, but I imagine players coming in from more recent d20 games have a much simpler reason. They’ve become so used to games where the d20 is basically just a formality for tasks you’re good at, that the actual swing of a d20 feels like a betrayal or glitch.

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I find that a game that’s aiming to be tactical does need a baseline level of crunch and tightness, otherwise tactics are impossible to “enforce”. (This includes both Draw Steel and pf2e to be clear)

focus points, 1/10-minute cooldowns, etc, so even a party that has one of those overpowered non-combat healing options will still feel challenged by short duration attrition. 3/3

WAY ahead of the curve in terms of healing options for out of combat. I believe the Necromancer also has one such insanely ahead of the curve option available. That being said I don’t worry too much about it because the time-scales that attrition HP will also, naturally, attrition things like 2/3

I do see those sorts of takes all the time, and they do baffle me, tbh. The correct take is: due to Treat Wounds: you are always at full HP IF given enough time. Whether you’re given enough time can (and should, imo) have real strategic considerations to it. And yeah, Garden of Healing is 1/3

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I’d say math manipulation is probably not one of my reasons tbh, that’s mostly just “there” lol. The most compelling part of pf2e to me is actually the action economy being more restrictive. I find that it makes the game more dynamic and movement focused. Also I find the abilities more cinematic.

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In my experience, the D&D 5E/5.5E, OSR, and PBTA communities are all noticeably more likely to proselytize than the PF2E community is. At least in Reddit and Discord spaces, can’t speak for what it’s like on BlueSky.

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Always funny when someone pulls out the “have you read how Climbing works in PF2E????” card as if it automatically “wins” a discussion. Crunchy games have most crunch for when every action matters. If every action doesn’t matter (i.e. situations don’t change every 2-6 seconds)… don’t use it.

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top 3 most preachy TTRPG fandoms, frankly, not even close. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that pf2e has been generally one of the most “this game does what it’s trying to do and doesn’t suit everyone, have you tried X?” communities I’ve ever seen. 2/2

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It’s also very frustrating that the wider TTRPG community has insane double standards on who is “allowed” to talk about their game being good or bad. Like the reputation for pf2e players supposedly being too preachy and pushy about the game, even though I don’t even think we break into the 1/2

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Hmmm I see what you mean. I do LIKE the Minion rules so I don’t mind, but it always did confuse me when people use Draw Steel’s or 4E’s Minion rules in comparison to something like, say, PF2E’s PL-2/3/4 creatures. Like you said, they’re meant to be edge case rules. PL-6 or lower, so to speak.

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Makes sense. I still love Draw Steel but the complete abandonment of simulationist aspects legitimately makes the game feel less “real” to me. I frequently fail to have a mental image of what my allies are doing. Probably something that just gets fixed over time though.

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Oh! What’s the issues with Delian Tomb? I’m running it for a group of mostly newbies rn (1 very experienced player, 1 has dabbled in D&D, 2 have never touched a TTRPG), and we just got done the first dungeon. The game’s on hiatus till October so now would be a good time for me to fix things.

sky high that the d20 actually just doesn’t matter. Pf2e sticks out like a sore thumb to them because it doesn’t let you stack numbers to that degree without a concerted effort from the entirety of a level 15+ party lol. 2/2

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This is something that @dantalksgames.bsky.social talks a lot about. There are a lot of people whose real problem is that they don’t like the swing of the d20 (and the d20 has a LOT of swing), and they accidentally land on the “solution” of playing games where you can blow up your modifiers so 1/2

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