Here's My Story

Ban and I are optimisers, whether in single or multiplayer games. In this post, I would like to focus on table-top role-playing games (TTRPG). Ideally, everyone should try their best to optimise their TTRPG characters. It would make their characters useful to the party and thus make everyone happy. I regularly encounter players who eschew optimisation in favour of flavour/roleplay-wise. For example, a DnD's Warlock can safely dump Intelligence and Strength to maximise their most important stats i.e. Charisma, Dexterity and Constitution to be useful but someone might say, "But my Warlock has to be intelligent because of his background." Their character is either (1) suboptimal but not bad because their most important stats are still reasonable: just not as a high as they could be because some points are allocated to their roleplaying stats, or (2) terrible because their most important stats are weak. In my heart, I would frown on (2) because they are just burdening the par...

Eight days after the initial consultation and the subsequent operation, we were back at Subang Eye Specialist Centre. This time, I found parking much nearer than the last time and we spent 1 hr 40 mins instead of 3 hours. Still a snooze fest 💤 The good news is that Ban's eye is recovering as expected, nothing untoward happened for the past 8 days, and there is no other tear or complication. The bad news is that, apparently, we misunderstood the doctor previously: Ban is to refrain from strenous activities for a month, not just the first week 😬 Next apppointment (hopefully the last!) is in 3 weeks time. 

This session was two weeks after the last . About a week before this, I noticed that dicing chicken didn't cause pain: it was more like soreness. Also, at last I could pinpoint where the pain was coming from. Oddly, it was from two places: a spot deep inside the fleshy part of the palm, below the thumb and closer to the wrist; the other spot is about one-and-a half finger line below the wrist, on the right side of the tendon. As usual, Lee checked by manipulating the hand and arm. He declared that this was the best condition so far, which I agreed. Continue with the same exercises and I can restart push-up, which he already said I could during the last session but I'm going to take it slow. I'll resume with knees down first. Next appointment is in three weeks time.   

One day, Ban complained about a strand of hair kept getting into his eye. He suspected it was this abnormally long unruly eyebrow hair. I showed him that I had one too, which is longer, but it doesn't bother my eye. He was then curious as to why his shorter eyebrow hair got into his eye. He later realised that there are floaters in his right eye. I told him that I have one or two of them for decades and I vaguely recalled that they were harmless. I suggested to him that he googled about it to be sure. Couple of days later, he told me that according to some medical websites, sudden onset of floaters warrant a visit to the doctor. He wasn't sure whether he should go straight to an ophthalmologist or not. I suggested consulting a GP first. Well, GP suggested to see the specialist :D Ban chose to consult the ophthalmologist that the GP recommended i.e. Dr Kewaljit Singh. Subang Eye Specialist Centre was more than 20 mins away by car. Belatedly, I remember there is a much nearer, th...

Level 8 Class feat: Drifting Pollen. Yet another way to debuff enemies. Stacks with off-guard, which I can easily do by flanking, and frightened, which our swashbuckler and sorceress can do. This then increase the chance of critically succeeding in inflicting prone condition on them via some Impulses. However, since affects all creatures within my aura, I will retrain Level 4's Tumbling Lumber to Safe Elements and retrain Level 5's Calcifying Sand to Tumbling Lumber. I'm getting rid of the Calcifying Sand because of its Overflow trait i.e. if triggered, it will stop my Kinetic Aura and so Drifting Pollen will disappear too. Since it will not be my turn (it's a Reaction), I cannot reactive my aura immediately thereafter. Skill feat: Mortaling Healing. Increased potential healing from Treat Wounds. Level 9   Skill increase: Master in Athletics. Ancestry Feat: Mountain's Stoutness. Increased tankiness and survivability. Gate's Thresshold: Expand the Portal -> Ea...

Level 2 Class feat: Tremor. Range AOE that can knock prone enemies on critical success. Regardless of enemies' rolls, the burst area becomes difficult terrain. Prone enemies are off-guard and take -2 circumstance penalty to attack roll. So enemies are easier for us to attack while this makes them harder to attack us. They can stand to get rid of the prone condition but that will eat one of their 3 actions. Skill feat: Assurance in Medicine. Helps to auto-succeed in Medicine check to Treat Wound when it's upgraded at the next level. Level 3 Skill increase: Expert in Medicine. With proficiency bonus +7, I auto-succeed when Treat Wound because of Assurance in Medicine. General feat: Fleet. Speed increases from 20ft to 25ft. Positioning is crucial if I want to melee. Level 4 Class feat: Tumbling Lumber. Similar to Tremor but its AOE is retangular and requires Reflex save instead of Fortitude save. So the choice of which of these impulse to use is mainly dependent on which save the ...

So, I thought of ways to support my melee teammates. Right after first session, I asked GM's permission to change from single gate earth kineticist to dual-gate earth & wood kineticist simply to grab Timber Sentinel from wood element.  We're now level three and based on the various encounters we had so far, I came up with the following build up to level 12 (expected last level of the campaign). I'll set out my plan on how to use this build to help my party in this campaign. Level 1 Ancestry: Dwarf Dwarf has high hit points and boost Constitution (primary statistic for kineticist), Wisdom (high Will save is good and also main stat for Medicine) and one ability score of your choice. The flaw is a minus one Charisma, which isn't important for this build. Heritage: Aiuvarin Picked this so that later I can pick the ancestry feat to increase speed. Ancestry feat: Unburdened Iron A great feat as it lets you ignore the reduction to speed from any armor. The deduction in red...

For sometime now, Ban and join had accepted invitation to join an acquaintance's discord server mainly for ttrpg games that he runs. Later, upon my suggestion, Ban and I attended one-shot sessions of a couple of games. Signed up for a third but that was canceled because of lack of players. Despite having tried more systems, I'm still partial towards DnD's system. However, when the GM announced that he was looking for players for Season of Ghosts, an adventure path for Pathfinder 2e (now Remastered version), I decided to sign up for it after Ban agreed to do so too. It's the closest to DnD system and I had some experience with Pathfinder 1 from playing Wrath of the Righteous crpg, with lots of help and guidance from Ban. I am aware that Pathfinder is way more complicated than DnD. One great thing about Pathfinder is that there are free character builders that incorporate nearly everything in the game. The one we're using is Pathbuilder 2e. It is only the animal compa...

Is the Harry Potter still popular currently? Incidentally, I'm now playing Hogwarts Legacy, which is aready two years old. Regarding these donuts, I find that I don't like such doughnuts (American donuts?) because they're too sweet. Plan doughnut with some sugar is the best.

This session was 3 weeks after the last . About a week before it, I started to be aware of which actions trigger pain or twinge: Slight pain when hand on a mat, slightly behind me, pointing backward and body leaned slightly towards it. Slight pain when dicing chicken. Noticeably lesser t han previously . Twinge at base of thumb when doing the shoulder stretch using the wall. Twinge when wiping face with towel but I now think it occurs only in the morning. Overall, it's better: triggered less often and pain intensity is much less. As usual, Lee examined the hand and arm, prodded/massaged them while getting feedback from me until finally the pain was reduced to mere twinge. He concluded that it might be posture issue. Something to do with my neck and being slightly hunched when I sat up. All exercises remained the same except replace the chest/back stretch (point (3) here ) with the following: Both arms straight out in front with hands making the thumbs' up sign. Raise arms up a...