beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

Back at the beginning of the season I think I predicted the ending would be an RTD special made of Big Feelings, and I certainly have Big Feelings about that episode.

But the ones I have at the minute are Angry Sad, which is not my favourite set, honestly.

So.

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Big Feelings time wasn't fun this week.


I do however know I shall eventually have different feelings about a lot of it.

I have spent some time today listening to the Big Finish range The Lost Stories, with 6 and Peri.
Unfortunately I have concluded they could on the whole have remained lost with no great loss to my entertainment.
I don't know what specifically is displeasing me about how they're put together but they're making me feel better about my own writing on the bounce.

Which is not a kind set of thoughts but that's my opinion thus far.

Something missing, not clicking, planning to go back to other ranges instead.

Wish World: quite the most unpleasant world yet. The scariest thing Doctor Who has shown us, ( Read more... ) That was not a subtle story but it landed some hits.
I think I'll withhold judgement until next week though. How the whole thing works depends on what he does with the ending. Nicely done so far but who knows.

I will say though it is the most RTD thing to make *that* earlier episode turn out to be important. So I rewatched ( Read more... )


Also listened to this week

Susan's War 3, Grandfather Time: more Time War stories, this time with the guy who doesn't want to be called The Doctor but thankfully for the writers will still answer to Grandfather.
I liked these two. Sending Susan on diplomatic rescue missions suits her. And this one of her grandfather has an extra edge to his actions, which compare contrasts interestingly to his earlier self who was still refusing the war after Susan had signed up.
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These Susan's War stories give her plenty to do and I like that.


After the Daleks, a Doctor Who Early Adventure, picks up Susan's adventures when she was still trying to get into the TARDIS that last time, then keeps going until she actually chooses for herself from a number of available options. It does a lot of good stuff with the setting, not just the immediate leftovers of the Dalek invasion but politics and bad guys stoking hate of aliens just to win an election. It would be really nice if that story was never timely.

Susan and Jack have a lot in common, and it would be interesting for them to have a conversation about it. Also, Jack would get to the relevant era on the slow path, which is actually pretty worrying when you think they'd still have to wait for the Doctor to fix things. Except Jack is from after the Time War and we're only sure Susan was there Before. What that whole era looks like After the Time War is still a question.

But Jack got left behind and according to Big Finish ended up in the historical record in such a way you have to wonder if a conscientious time traveller had to leave him there. And Susan does something here that would put her on the record right away. So, interesting.



I continue to like Doctor Who, so that's nice.

I haven't been sleeping great for a bit
and I keep falling asleep when I put a Doctor Who audio on, despite not falling asleep for all the other hours I tried,
and I realised it's just
the Doctor is here
anxiety goes way down.

... then of course there's Daleks or some such and I jolt awake again so as sleep methods go it needs some work, but, kind of helpful?



Also I am relistening ones with a Big Finish Master and he's just... for reasons unknown even to me he reminds me of the time way back in high school when we did work experience outings and one was at the golf course and a manager explained to us the Rules of Hospitality Work? And then challenged us to find one single thing Wrong with his place! And we found Many quickly. Like this voice isn't giving ultimate evil, it's giving possibly adding a payment meter to a hospital car park. I am... not enthused.



But my days proceed correctly, Nice Walks happen as scheduled, and May is a great month for Flowers, so that's very nice. Iris flowers are excellent, they are Purple or Yellow or White, and some of them have a Pattern, and they are very good to look at. Ducks are also good.


i just look forwards to getting more hours of sleep in a row quite soon.

I didn't even mean to start a new game, I just wanted to look something up and once it was loaded I fiddled with the difficulty settings and set it to normal numbers of enemies and normal damage and just basically 1 or standard or normal all up and down, plus the toggle that says enemies can do extra things. You'd think there was a difficulty level called All Normal Standard, but no, it is between two, Daring and Core https://pathfinderwrathoftherighteous.wiki.fextralife.com/Difficulty . And yet it is so so much easier than Core. I don't know what their math is like but there's half the enemies I've come to expect. It's ridiculous.

I should go back to the actual achievement getting run on Core, but it's just annoyingly difficult, while this is achievable.

I did not intend to stay awake this late but I played from the beginning through to Defenders Heart, about a third of the marketplace, Daeran, Camellia, and finishing Starward Gaze. And this is the first time since Neatholm that my characters have slept if you don't count passing out. So I should sleep now too.

The front of this book has a mini essay on pronunciation and several pages listing all the names of characters.
I needed this.
I spent so much time referring back to this.

The names being so unfamiliar to me added to the effect of being dropped in to a strange culture or two at the deep end, so that's nice, that's part of what the character has going on, that's a thing one could reasonably desire to induce the reader to feel.
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I think I only slightly like this pretty well written book.

But I put that next to my tendency to read franchise stuff forever - all things are Doctor Who all my life, and most things are Pathfinder for years now - and I think this effect of being landed in a world and having to figure it out amidst great confusion is exactly my least favourite thing about reading new stuff.

I think people who want a world plunked on them from a height and to have to figure it all out from clues are going to like this a lot better than I do.

This was a *very* good one. I wanted to go back to the beginning and watch it over again at once, but I had to eat a food and my vitamins and so I've sat down with my computer and am writing this.
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I liked that story very a lot but I guess I don't have much to say about it.

See it unspoiled if you can, it's a good one.

Today's news: Arcanist Oracle Mystic Theurge gets up to 10th level spells with 40 levels to play with,
Enlightened Philosopher seems better within Wrath's extremely limited spell set, plus you can't beat immortality for final revelations,
and getting a +5 inherent bonus to Intelligence makes the Arcanist side happy.

... I sat down to eat lunch before I did laundry and that did not work out so great for the laundry.

Yesterday I opened Wrath of the Righteous Inevitable Excess to fiddle with character builds while I ate lunch
then realised it was late evening and I'd only rebuilt the team
and then discovered it don't really work like I wanted it to.

I meant to quit around that point but somehow stayed playing until about 2 in the morning.

Not awesome. And I don't even like Inevitable Excess.

... the builds on the internet are pants though, they make glass canons that only care about killing things fast, their saves are garbage, I had characters actually running away, that hasn't happened to me for... since lowest levels I guess.

The buffs you can use by then help but if you miss even one then oops guess we're running now. And it shouldn't do that. They can be so much more resilient than that.

Also by the time you've applied all the buffs you *need* the mythic extended versions because it takes minutes to put them all on.
... mythic extended will have 24 hour buffs, which is great fun, just tedious to reapply.

The Woljif builds that only focus on stab damage are... I feel like apologising to tiny digital simulated Woljif, that guy deserves so much better. Like sure he is killing things real good, but he started out a guy with interests, and now he's a guy with mutagens and knives. Yes it's handy that alchemical bonuses stack with the belts everyone has by now, but there's more to life, you know?

20th level is less fun than it seems though because of the stacking problems. Like yes we can apply All The Buffs Forever, but we probably have a belt that does that anyway. And boots. And other items that are basically non optional by then. So we're wearing optimised gear and casting optimised spells just to keep the fights about the same difficult as they were to start with.

It's the boringest way to do magic.

Also though, once you're level 20 there are not enough little squares to keep your spells in, even before you add metamagic. With metamagic? You have to clear the spell bar and start again, this time Selective or Bolster Empower Maximized or Extended or Completely Normal Spells.
... the game advantage of redoing every single spell as Completely Normal is outweighed by the time it takes. It's all in the spellbooks with the metamagic applied but I haven't sorted out half the clicky squares of it.

I will grant that trying to play an arcanist oracle mystic theurge makes this problem gigantimous
and, also, that that build still doesn't work in any useful way
and, also, that I chose Trickster forgetting I couldn't go back and do Legend later, so I didn't even have the levels to get to 9th spells
but still, you can have so many more different spells than fit on the controls
and the mythic spells don't help that problem.



It wasn't a very interesting day to play, don't know why I am trying to interest the internet.


TLDR: I spent many hours doing the sort of button clicking that it turns out would work better as a spreadsheet
and getting frustrated at the interface.

... but I still kind of want to go back in and try the Legend build instead...

That was a strong episode.
Sort of felt high contrast bold bright colors about it, not a subtle story, but covered some strong emotional and political territory.
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I am liking this season and look forwards to more.

I finished Drezen again yesterday, including the optional really hard fight, and the optional fight only took a handful of tries.

... playing without all dying repeatedly isn't possible on core. for me. anyway.

I stopped in the middle to let my shopping in and then got around to eating while I was doing all the talky bits when Drezen is first set up.

Seelah calls herself sister Seelah to the Knight Commander but Auntie Seelah to Daeran. Specifically in the context of saying she'll spank him in the drinking contest. Daeran says he's fine with losing to such a worthy opponent especially if she carries him upstairs to bed.

which struck me as obscurely sad because there is no up to the rooms prepared that day, there's broken places the players can't get past, so he's home, but home isn't quite there.

It made me think about ages and relative ages. We don't get precise numbers for most of them, just Ember iirc, and it's tricky to figure out lives from life experience, since the correlation between experience and XP is necessarily fluid with regards to backstory. I mean you level up repeatedly in days in Kenabres, age isn't measurable from experience. And then there's how old assorted races are for their age category, most obviously Ember, but what with meeting a half elf, a tiefling, an aasimar, and a mongrel right away, what an age even means gets messy from the get go.

Pathfinder rules for ages as per the back of Advaced Race Guide say the youngest a 1st level tiefling or aasimar can be random rolled to be is 24. Aasimar or tiefling adulthood is listed as 20, where human adulthood is listed as 15. It doesn't quite make sense to take that number as written, humans can start out at a minimum of 16 because you roll assorted numbers of dice to add on top. Humans are coming out of training ready to face the world at 16 minimum, so I feel like considering 16 adult is the lowest humans can go.

Aasimar and tieflings roll more dice. Their aging effects start at 35/53/70 same as humans, but they are adult late and roll more dice. So they're slow learners, until they hit 1st level and meet the standard character progression. Aasimar and tieflings are rolling at least 4 dice on top of a 20 year adulthood, so they're not going to be rolled up at 1st level until at least 24.

Which means, one, those with the blood of the outer planes are going to special school compared to humans or even half elves. Half elves are adult at 20 but can roll a 1 and be fully 1st level at 21.
Two, unlike half elves, after that they just have less time. Slow start, normal age pattern for humans? Less time before ageing starts taking their stats.
Three... There's a solid interpretation that Daeran is actually pretty young for an aasimar.

It's interesting because we know Ember is an elf child read as a child by people you meet, and we know however young Woljif might be, most people saw a tiefling. Daeran described at his party gets compared to angels, inevitably unfavourably. Due to being an actual mortal child. But being an aasimar and a noble and a rich man and someone who was found having drunk all the wine after a disaster of a party just... seems like the order of interpretations, before anyone gets to age.

Daeran could be an adult the way a college fresher is an adult. Possibly after a gap year of partying.
He could have grown up with tutors not just because he was rich, but because he, and some of his family, were slow, compared to humans without celestial influence.

Or I could be over interpreting a single dice table in the back of an expansion book, because I am older than a lot of characters and they keep looking younger from here.

Ember saying she's going to the trouble so the trouble won't come to more children? Makes me think of how young how many people were.


I haven't played as an aasimar yet and wonder what dialogue I'd get.

I am playing as a tiefling and it throws in a bit extra here and there, stuff about you understanding how bad tieflings have it, or just between us yeah the abyss whispers, or a bit I just did when you ask a vendor what a tiefling is doing in the crusade and he's like I bet you're only asking because you had to answer that stupid question so many times you're taking your turn.
... the dialogue does offer you chances to say all the same prejudiced things, you just get a few extra words of answers sometimes.



The other thing is I keep choosing the character portraits where they're wearing a mask and hood, and then everyone always recognises your race anyway. And sure the view of your animated character doesn't get a face covering unless you get a mask with game stats, but it still feels weird? Like how do you know there's horns under the hood, if I'm trying to cover my hair all the time anyway? Not all the options have glowy eyes anyway. Why do tails always stick out of your outfit? They're not for grabbing or for balance, you could just keep them under your robes. But nope, everybody always knows.

Which is super weird when the race guide says "No two tieflings look alike".



I am playing a tiefling witch and I just chose the Angel path. Apparently this means not getting some cool out of the spellbook options, but, tiefling witch angel makes so many characters eat their prejudices, I am pretty determined to finish the game this way.

... it is not easy on Core. I am spending all the money on healing and therefore not getting the best equipment. It's... tricky.

But my achievements started pinging again after eight months of nope, so I have incentive to stick with it!
Sure they only ping after I turn it all off and on again, but, incentives, I am getting them. On Core even.

Can't go back and get the optional boss fight from Kenabres though, don't have a save I could conveniently do, it keeps saying too full.

... if I do another play through I guess that would be why then...


Shall see how this one goes. Last one stalled when I had to drop the difficulty for Lost Chapel. This time I grit my teeth and invited Regill along and kept Camellia and did all the locations before Lost Chapel or Drezen and it went much better.

Onwards!

I fell asleep with the light on and my watch telling me to stand every hour. I took off the watch eventually but that was a lot of interrupted sleep I wasn't expecting.

My most recent dream before waking:
I was with Captain Picard and Riker, Picard series editions, and we were trapped in the Abyss, trying to find portals out.
Portals looked like flatscreen TVs at sizes up to and including Battle Cruiser ( Read more... )

So, I woke up knowing if I could get up the lift far enough I could follow Jack Harkness home to Cardiff,
but also that I'd somehow have to warn him to keep the refugees contained and keep an eye on them,
which seems rude now I'm awake but also one of the big conundrums.

I'd also have to close the door I made before Cybermen could get to it, and that would mean staying on the Abaddon side.

And then of course Captains Riker and Picard would need to go back to the abyss to pick up the rest of their friends, and this route out wasn't quite a way home for them, unless we could get all the way back before Susan got a message to her Grandfather. Then there's a lift home waiting.

Tidy.



The exact sort of mega crossover that happens in dreams and goes meaninglessly messy when you try and write it, but, for the characters, tidy.


Writing it down sounds tidy and plotty but dreaming it was all just
Run.

I do have my dreams trained well though, if they know they can always Run to Jack.

I think I played WotR for 14 hours today. And I think I spent the last six of them thinking 'hmm, that is a long time, I shall stop playing now'. But obviously failed at stop playing.

I did ( Read more... )

I got a tiny bit of new to me story today, but decided to undo it because I do not like playing Evil, even in small doses.

But once I choose myth paths I have decided to definitely choose Angel this time so I'll get actual new story there.


I am not enjoying Core as much as lower difficulties. Lumpy challenge, too much if it surprises you but if you prepare it's just a question of luck and carrying enough cure scrolls. Also it's frustrating knowing you'd have the exact spell you need if you levelled up one fight before this bit loaded instead of one fight after. I just can't justify getting a rest to load my new spells, only that means paying for it in cures when no one has True Seeing working.


I intend to take a day off the computer tomorrow. I am not good at moderation. Alternation shall have to do.