Author: aabicus

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The 5 Best Stealth Weapons in Payday 2

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Payday 2‘s stealth missions require a completely different set of skills to a regular heist, and correspondingly, your stealth weapons will be focused on very different stats to their loud counterparts. Plenty of weapons offer high concealment, the bread-and-butter stat to stealthing, which means the standout weapons bring some sort of additional utility. Today, we’re covering The 5 Best Stealth Weapons in Payday 2! Starting with #1, the Judge shotgun pistol is widely agreed to be the best stealth weapon in the game. Great stats, great performance, high concealment, unobtrusive silencer, and like any shotgun, it sends victims flying when… [Continue Reading]

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D&D 5e: A Complete Guide to Sidekicks

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Pelor help me, I’ve fallen down another rabbit hole of obscure D&D mechanics. And these are even less likely than usual to ever happen in my actual games. But I don’t care because the sidekick rules are honestly really cool and revolve around one of my favorite concepts: playable NPC/monsters! Introduced in Dragon of Icespire Peak (and heavily fleshed out in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything), the sidekick rules are a system whereby a normally-unplayable creature can gain its own class levels that let it grow stronger alongside a party of regular PCs. There are three Sidekick classes (Warrior, Expert, and Spellcaster)… [Continue Reading]

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The 5 Best Weapons in D&D 5e (That You Can’t Use)

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D&D 5th Edition simplified the weapon tables to an extreme degree compared to its predecessors. Gone are Exotic Weapon Proficiencies, or most subqualities like “keen” or “masterwork”, and most of the surviving options differ only in damage type or dice. And for the most part, martial NPCs/monsters honor these categories and follow the same rules for their own loadouts. But sometimes they don’t. Occasionally, a certain official monster or villain carries some seriously cool racial weapon with unique stats, and every GM just knows the party’s gonna ask if they can loot it from the corpse and use it themselves.… [Continue Reading]

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My 5 Favorite Bows in Gaming

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Since Medic recently covered her 5 favorite bows in Warframe, I was inspired to do something similar, but for gaming as a whole. I’ve often found myself gravitating to bows when available, in part due to their uniqueness in a modern setting. They often play wholly differently to regular firearms, with arcs and draw times and often extra ammo types. The general trend is “rewarding if you learn how to use it,” and I love standing out through mastering the intricacies of an unusual weapon or gadget. One last note before we begin that crossbows are also eligible for this… [Continue Reading]

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D&D 5e: A Guide to Throwing Weapons

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There are a few playstyles in 5e that don’t really receive enough developer support, in my humble opinion. Strength-based unarmed builds, for one, as well as single-wielding one-handed weapons without a corresponding shield. But throwing builds are probably the most-maligned on the list. Unless you stretch all the way into archery, non-spellcasters unfortunately aren’t going to hold their own in ranged combat. In today’s article, I want to discuss a few of the reasons why, and what an enterprising player can do to mitigate the issues. Problem #1: Action Economy Martial characters (except rogues) gain more attacks as they level… [Continue Reading]

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Why You Should Try D&D 1st Edition

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Dungeons & Dragons has come a long way from its early days. When OD&D first came out in 1974, it quickly caught fire and spread throughout the wargaming community. Almost five decades later, it’s still recognizably the game we love, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t also massively evolved. My only goal with this article is to encourage you to seize any opportunity to experience the singular wildness of old-school D&D. How? No idea, that’s probably the hardest part. I’ve only ever had one opportunity, and it was in 2011, while I was a professional Traveller GM for Strategicon. One… [Continue Reading]

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[Planetside 2] Searching For Saviors

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Today, February 21st, is an important milestone in my Planetside 2 career. Exactly 10 years ago, I first donned my spandex and took my earliest steps onto Auraxis’ battle-scarred continents. I can’t remember much about those beginning days beyond what I chronicled in older articles. But without even knowing it, I’d unwittingly started what would eventually prove to be the longest and slowest grind I have ever attempted in a video game. Your Mission, Soldier In 2014, Daybreak Games added the Directives system into their MMOFPS to provide some rewards for mastering the various facets of combat. Now you could… [Continue Reading]

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Control (2019) Review

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When I bought Control back in 2019, I told myself I wouldn’t release a review until I’d completed the game. This wasn’t an unusual stance for me, as why would I review a game I hadn’t finished? However, 3½ years later and after countless attempts to revive my playthrough after taking multi-month breaks, I’m giving up. According to the Wiki I’m on story mission 7 of 10, and that’s where I’m calling it. Sorry. I want to add a large caveat that my complaints with this game are extremely subjective. Most of my friends enjoyed it, and you’ll probably like… [Continue Reading]

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Call of Cthulhu: My 5 Favorite Under-Used Skills

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By far the toughest part of Call of Cthulhu is how few skillpoints it gives you. When every skill uses a percentile and you only get a couple-hundred points to allocate, it’s really difficult to excel at more than a few checks. This naturally leads to the most obviously-useful skills (Spot Hidden, Library Use, Firearms, Stealth) seeing massive use across the playerbase. But today I wanted to talk about some rarer skills that I’ve nonetheless found worth investing in. Many times they can save you skillpoints in other areas, or unlock niche-but-effective playstyles. You certainly can’t pick them all, but at… [Continue Reading]

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Pokemon: Much Ado About Breloom

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I’ve written articles about my two favorite Pokémon already, but we humans just can’t resist making Top 3s of everything, can we? While Rotom is still my favorite battle Pokémon, Breloom is usually far easier to find in the games it appears. Its pre-evolution Shroomish is a common sight in early-game grassy routes, with its adorable stubby legs and grumpy face. I can’t look at its unamused little frown without smiling. Breloom (along with Shroomish) is clearly a fungus Pokémon, but I like how much more interesting its design gets than just that. Sure its mushroom hat is awesome, but… [Continue Reading]

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