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I was looking for another fantasy mystery to read after finishing Trade of blood and was delighted to come across this recently released book by RJ Barker. I had already read his age of assassins and tide child trilogies before and enjoyed them alot, so I went in with high expectations, and I am happily not disappointed!

The book is about a Mortedant - someone who can read the final thoughts of a dead person - who gets caught up in a conspiracy after a routine work outing, and is now implicated in a murder. He has 4 days to figure out the actual criminal, and as he inevstigates he uncovers a deeper and a diabolical conspiracy.

I really really loved the world building. All of the book is set in one crowded, gothic, kinda steam punk city with a sleeping god, weird magic, and weirder technologies. I kept twanting to read more and more of the book just for the world! The settings plays a big role in the story and the mystery, and because the setting worked so well the rest of the book worked really well as well. There's so many little things said matter-of-factly that made the world - not just the city - feel so alive and mysterious. So many mysteries were setup and there is so much more to explore in this world that it feels very exciting to wait for subsequent books.

The characters are pretty archetypical IMO. The main character is kinda snobbish and prejudiced but has a heart of gold. He has a noble but disgraced body guard, and a young assistant who is rogueish but also someone you want to protect. I found all of them to be well written. The main character - Mortedant Hask himself - is also the narrator, and I found his slightly formal, slightly haughty voice to fit this story very well. The found family aspect between the three of them worked for me. There were several delightful side characters as well, but I wasn't very fond of the antagonist. Felt like he didn't feel like as much as a presence as I wanted him to be.

The plot is good, it is not a very intricate mystery but it folds out in a very satisfying way. Best mysteries for me are those where you figure out what's happening just before the characters and that happened here, so yay. I'll say the pacing is slightly off in some places, especially in the beginning, where a lot of pages are spent on simply explaining the world. I didn't mind it at all because I enjoyed the world a lot, but it could have been done in a better way.

All in all, I was very happy with this book. Fantasy mysteries are the shit. Gimme like a dozen more of these. Looking forward to the next one!

I'm really struggling to understand What a standard runesmith turn in combat looks like. Let's assume I want to play a melee martial runesmith who uses etched runes for passive effects on both themselves and their allies. They can be invoked once per combat before needing 10 minutes to etch them again, so maybe a first round invocation at the cost of losing the passive benefits is a call to be made.

Now about tracing. I am not quite sure if it is worth it to spend an action to trace a rune that lasts till the end of next turn just for the passive benefit / negative effect on the runebearer? Or are we always tracing assuming they are going to be invoked before the traces expire and retrace them? something like trace this turn, invoke the next turn before they expire?

I'm very interested in playing damage dealing + healing rune smith who can also make strikes. I am just not sure what my turn is going to look like and what the upsides of tracing runes vs when to invoke them is. Any help is appreciated. TIA

Anne says towards the end of this "Dear old world, you are very lovely and I am glad to be alive in you". To which I thought, I am so glad to be alive and have read this book. A little cheesy but that's genuinely how i was feeling.

Through the book, right from the beginning, Anne shows so much joy, so much love to the world she is living in, to the things that are happening, to the people around her. She loves and cares with abandon and hates with a passion. She lives her life so fiercely and brightly that it made me realise how little I have lived in the past few years. Somewhere as part of being an adult, work had become all of my life. If I were to describe last few years as a color palette, it is mostly a dreary grey of monotone routine. So to read this book where this orphan child so unabashedly expresses her appreciation for life was like activating a part of my brain that I haven't used in a long time.

Reading this book, I was appreciating the world through Anne's eyes and it had such a profound impact on me that I find it hard to describe. Nothing materially has changed in my life, I am still the same person, but it feels like some crust has scraped off. It makes me want to be like her, to try and love like she does.

As for the book itself, it is gorgeous. The author has such a way of painting the scenary that I can imagine the entire island so vividly. Her side characters - especially Mathew and Marilla - are all very lovely too, and anne herself is simply the best. I laughed out loud several times reading the book (that dream about Diana getting small pox and Anne taking it from her and dying valiantly for her had me cackling), and by the end of the book I was sobbing too.

This book had such a profound impact on me, I sincerely recommend this to anyone who hasn't read it yet. 5/5

Maybe its because of the music, and the delivery, and the atmosphere in the theater, but the entire scene where odysseus monologues about why odysseus did not want to come home had such an impact on me. "To burn the walls of troy was to burn the world entire", what a fucking line. I want to go rewatch the movie in the theater just for this part again.

New watcher here, and I only now got to watching videos which have Damien in it, and this dude is genuinely my favorite. He is funny but especially in stuff like Smosh reads reddit, I feel like he is continuously empathetic to everyone and also has a great BS detector.

That's it, he is just great. I wish he was in more videos.

I have always thought that force fang does weak amount of damage because it bypasses AC, and does automatic damage, and compared to a lot of one action focus spells it does do low damage. For example elemental toss (sorcerer focus spell) does 1d8 damage (+ blood magic effect) that scales every rank instead of every couple of ranks that force fang does.

But what I just realised is that force fang does exactly the same damage as a runed up shortbow on a lot of levels (if you use your property runes for damage though, the shortbow will overtake it).

Level	Force Fang avg	Shortbow dice avg
1–3	3.5	3.5
4	3.5	7 (striking )
5–8	7	7
9–11	10.5	7
12	10.5	10.5 (greater striking)
13–18	14	10.5
19–20	17.5	14 (major striking)

If you add property runes, shortbow will pull ahead, and shortbow can crit for deadly d10 (or it can miss for zero damage), it can trigger on hit damage from spells such as gravity weapon, draconic barrage, vicious howl. For starlit span magii specifically, Shortbow also adds weapon specialisation damage (2 at level 7 to 6 at level 15) so it overtakes force fang starting from level 12.

Even considering the fact that forcefang never misses, if we assume we use all our property runes for damage and we hit 50% of time and crit 10% of the time (a generous assumption I know), shortbow pulls ahead at 10 and stays ahead but not by a huge amount. If we use some property runes for utility instead of damage, and if we reduce our hit chance because of bosses and stuff, it'll swing down to force fang again, but I don't want to get into all that. So I'm not making any claim to say that force fang is better than a bow strike at all.

I donno what point I am trying to make here, I am just surprised that force fang is comparable to shortbow for a startlit span magus. I am gonna be playing starlit magus as my next character (in season of ghosts yay), and I was resigned to the fact that I'll be doing low damage to get my spell strike back, but with this realisation that I'm doing a shortbow level damage, I feel pretty good about using it.

An oft repeated sentiment in this subreddit is that save based spells are not good on magus because their DC is too low compared to regular spellcasters, and the sentiment is often upvoted heavily. But it is only partially true i.e it is only true if you dump intelligence.

If you make sure to boost intelligence at every possible opportunity and start with 3 in your spellcasting modifier (int for maguses, wis for monks, cha for champions), you are only 1 behind on your spell DC on 9 out of 20 levels, you have the same DC for 5 out of 20 levels and 2 behind for 5 of the 20 levels and 3 behind for 1 level. I will say that being 1 behind a full spellcaster is totally fine. Yeah every +1 matters, but if you're targeting a weak or moderate save you are usually fine. Being 2 or 3 behind is a big enough penalty to not consider save based spells at those levels.

But here's the thing, for first 14 levels of the game, there's only two levels (level 7, 8) where you are two behind on your DC! And if you're playing for upto level 18, there's 4 levels where you're two behind. So for the vast majority of the game, your spell DC is really pretty good, especially considering you are getting the defenses (in terms of saves), and martial progression of a martial.

Level	Wizard (Int)	Wizard(Prof)	Magus(Int)	Magus(Prof)	Wizard DC	Magus DC	Diff
1	4	2	3	2	7	6	1
2	4	2	3	2	8	7	1
3	4	2	3	2	9	8	1
4	4	2	3	2	10	9	1
5	4*	2	4	2	11	11	0
6	4*	2	4	2	12	12	0
7	4*	4	4	2	15	13	2
8	4*	4	4	2	16	14	2
9	4*	4	4	4	17	17	0
10	5	4	4*	4	19	18	1
11	5	4	4*	4	20	19	1
12	5	4	4*	4	21	20	1
13	5	4	4*	4	22	21	1
14	5	4	4*	4	23	22	1
15	5*	6	5	4	26	24	2
16	5*	6	5	4	27	25	2
17	5*	6	5	6	28	28	0
18	5*	6	5	6	29	29	0
19	5*	8	5	6	32	30	2+
20	6	8	5	6	34	31	3+

+ The difference will become 3 and 4 respectively once apex items are in play. A martial is likely going to pick an apex item that boosts strength or dex.

The only reason Maguses haven't been good casters is because they didn't have enough spell slots. Now they do, and dependeing on what levels you play at (anything up to level 14), you're a very good spellcaster at those levels too. As long as you can spare the stats.

Now, sparing the stats for a startlit span magus is very easy. You can afford to start with +1 con as a ranged character IMO as long as you take toughness at level 3. It is a big problem for melee magi who want strength, dex, and con all (dex for medium armor). But it is still possible! All you need is an ancestry that boosts two of strength / con / int and doesn't have flaw in those. You can play a kholo, minotaur, hobgoblin, gnoll, android, or other races depending on if you're playing a finesse magus.

Of course you have to make some sacrificies because this means you'll have a flaw in wis (affects your perception, initiative, will saves) or cha (diplomacy, deception are very good to have skills) but that's the cost of having a comparable spell DC to your spell casters. And as you level up to past 10 once you have gotten a few ability increases under your belt, you're very fine. Eitherway, you can't have all, so if you want both good spell DC and good strike to hit, you have to compromise somewhere. I personally think it is worth it.

This opens up so many nice builds! A starlit span magus can now spec into loremaster and be pretty good at RK (while also recharging their spellstrike!), and cast enough spells to feel like a smart gish (strike with one action, cast a two action spell like fear, blister bomb, noxious metals, magic weapon, endure, spell strike + recall knowledge are all great turns). A sparkling targe magus can be a both good damage dealer on spell strike turns and be tanky (note, I am saying you're tanky, not a tank. You don't have the tools of guardian or champion to protect squishies. But dealing a powerful damage dealer while right infront of their faces is a good enough incentive IMO) while also casting spells if you don't want to move and want to let others come to you.

As soon as you stop wanting to spell strike every turn, you can have so much variety in your magii turns because their spell DC is pretty good. Have fun :D

PS: This also applie to monks, champions, rangers - they do have focus spells that are pretty good, and you can also multiclass to get good focus spells too. So all of them make for great gishes! Each of them have their own niches too, monks can start with scrolls in their hand to cast immediately for example.