Jarric

01/01/2024 - 174.4lbs 08/01/2024 - 172.0lbs 15/01/2024 - 170.9lbs 22/01/2024 - 169.2lbs 29/01/2024 - 169.0lbs 05/02/2024 - 168.8lbs 12/02/2024 - 169.2lbs Not surprised to see my weight going up this week - it was a pretty heavy one including a poker night with friends featuring a huge amount of beer and takeaway pizza. I ended the week almost 4,000kcal over my weekly target (so about 22% more than planned). Time to get back on track with this, and all being well that should be within reach this week.

Congratulations on going sub-200!

Well that makes more sense than what I was thinking Thank you! Yeah, I'd rather separate things too, but my main focus is to do both every day, so if it sometimes needs to be back-to-back to achieve that then I'll let it happen. Well you clearly know the lore and geography of Golarion better than I do! I wouldn't think that the supplies would be too hard to come by - though very specialist things might have to be imported from Absalom, the players' guide notes the following about Otari: "The town’s location near a major highway and its long history as a home to various adventuring parties draw many visitors. Lively trade passing through means unusual wares (and even magic items) aren’t too difficult to find." I imagined the noble family as being Taldan (not that I know much about Taldor either, now I think of it). The other two questions I'm going to have to think a bit more on, and probably discuss with the GM. There's a background made for this adventure called 'Fog Fen Tale-teller', which is what the swashbuckler is based around, so I'll see what the GM will give me in terms of things he might have seen (or pretended to have seen) in the Fog Fens. To be fair, French and Dutch aren't that similar (though more similar then Mandarin and Italian I'll grant you!). I think it's just there's a part of my brain where foreign languages are stored, and sometimes when I reach into it the wrong language comes out. I have had to put my phone back into English a few times when I have to do more complex stuff, and some apps actually don't work the same in different languages, but I try and avoid switching unless I have to. Weird things I've had include the 'plans' tab of My Fitness Pal not existing in French, and for a while my banking app would crash if I tried to check my mortgage balance with the phone in French.

I think that one summons Nigel Farage? If so, avoid at all costs.

No, I require all of my fantasy creatures to be totally logical with fully explainable abilities, damnit!

Congratulations man, those are some impressive numbers! Not long at all until your BMI goes under 30 at this rate.

Your course sounds fascinating; I'll look forward to hearing about what you learn.

Perhaps he's got sunshine in a bag?

No black magic I'm afraid. When I was practising fast guitar parts I would play them at half speed with a metronome, and then increase the metronome speed in small increments until I could get to full speed, if that helps.

You know, that's a very good question. They have darkvision, so they're definitely not blind, but I have no idea what they see through if their eyestalks have been replaced with flails... I love yours by the way, they're so cool! You should do one too! There's no rule against having more than one of the same snail. I do love how silly they are That's so cute! I love it

Ah, ok. I think Wrath of the Righteous still uses Pathfinder 1e rules rather than the 2e rules (though I've not played it). I will definitely try to update about Abomination Vaults here. Though to be fair, I seem to remember doing pretty well in a highly lethal game when I was very drunk ? . 1/2? That's not a hill, that's a wall . Yeah, think I might give that one a miss - I'm definitely not that hardcore!

A quick(ish) attempt at a D&D Flail Snail:

That embroidery's amazing @Amaroq Apprentice! I love the nerdy little needle keeper too. He looks so happy!

tl;dr I try and have about 10 stat points available per challenge, and then judge each one based on difficulty and importance. Long version: So my original system was using the Nerd Fitness character creator (you don't actually need it, but it's here if you haven't seen it before: https://www.nerdfitness.com/create-your-character/ ). With that system, you level up every 100 XP you earn, so I set my challenges up so that each challenge had a total of around 50XP, meaning that I would level up at most once every two months. (I also have life goals there that earn XP separately, but that's not relevant to the stat system.) Now that I'm using the stat points, I've reverse engineered it so that each stat point is worth 5XP; effectively I level up every 20 stat points. Each challenge I aim to have about 10 stat points available (though I'd rately expect to earn all 10, and if I have fewer goals than normal there might be fewer points on offer). In terms of what each goal is worth, they tend to be 1-3 stat points. More important goals are worth more points, as an incentive to prioritise them. Tougher goals also tend to get more points, both because it makes me work harder on them, and because it's more likely to yeild a reward on a partial success. Something worth only a single stat point should be a thing that I expect to get >90% completion on, and that I'm really just tracking through the challenge as the accountability will ensure I do it. Yeah, I'm really hoping we get the weather given that it's the first weekend in July - if we do it sounds like it'll be amazing. I've just looked up the Arc of Attrition. Looking at that distance, and the time of year, that sounds like madness. And not even the kind of madness that I enjoy doing With 20 miles between checkpoints it could actually be pretty dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. Heya! Good to have you, as always

I liked this post only because there's not a vomiting post reaction option

I totally get this. I can feel the pressure building up whenever I have a ton of notifications ony phone, or a pile of unread e-mails. My tabs on my phone are getting out of control too. I'll be interested to see (and steal) what strategies you end up with around this during this challenge.

Ok, as requested by @Laghail , here's some info in the Pathfinder campaing we're going to be starting at the end of the month, and my initial character thoughts. This is a Pathfinder 2e adventure called Abomination Vaults, which is a megadungeon campaign that's supposed to be highly lethal. We're each creating two characters given the low life expectancy of our first ones. All of this might change at session zero, but so far I have: Human Inventor Archer (inventor is the Pathfinder equivalent of D&D's artificer, but relies solely on mechanical gadgets rather than being a re-skinned spellcaster.) Gruff and brooding, he's secretly the son of a noble family who fell out with his parents and ran away from home. He now lives in the village of Otari, where he works as a tinker fixing the local lumber mill's equipment and doing odd mechanic jobs around town. In his spare time he works on his gadgets, including his highly-modified composite longbow, which will be his main weapon. I'm very much theming him around Green Arrow, so gadgets will take the form of trick arrows (grenade arrows, the infamous boxing glove arrow etc.). Physically if you picture Stephen Amell in the Arrow TV series you won't go far wrong. Orc Swashbuckler with Rogue Multiclass (Swashbuckler and rogue are separate classes in Pathfinder 2e) A young orc who does odd jobs around town, but mostly likes to spend his timing goofing off in the surrounding wilderness. He comes back with all sorts of tall tales about the great beasts that he's seen and escaped from, most of which people assume are just a kid making stuff up. And, to be fair, he's been know to wildly exaggerate at the best of times. He's as tall as any orc, but fresh-faced and skinny, giving him a slightly lanky and awkward look. Mechanically the swashbucker relies on being in a state of 'panache', which this character gains by tripping/grappling/shoving/disarming opponents. I picture him as a high-flying, rapier-wielding swashbuckler, who leaps from high places, swings across the room, dances round his opponents, and uses the environment to his advantage.

Yeah, for me it ends up being one set per character, so I guess it wouldn't end up being a ton if you're not actually playing D&D right now.

Thank you, I've been tweaking it for years but in general it seems to work for me. Happy to explain further if you want ideas for that kind of thing in future. So you're down in the west country then? Beautiful part of the world. I've done a lot of trip in and around Dartmoor, but Man v Coast will be the deepest into the south west I've ever been. I basically came up with a list of areas I could clean - living room floor, living room table, kitchen floor, kitchen worktops, hob etc. That came to 14 things, so I just numbered them, with the idea that I'd roll a 14-sided dice and whatever job comes up I'll do that one. I've now refined it a table numbered 2-15, and I determine the chore by rolling a d12+d3. Because of the way adding dice together works, the probabilities of the middle numbers are higher than the numbers at the extremes. The jobs that need doing least often I have assigned to 2 and 15 (1 in 36 chance of rolling, or 2.78%), then the next jobs to 3 and 14 (1 in 18 chance of rolling, or 5.56%). All other results have an equal chance of being rolled (1 in 12, or 8.33%). If you don't have dice you can just ask google to roll for you or use an online dice roller (good for weird numbers like the d14), but it is more fun with physical dice... OO, that's an interesting system; I might add that once I've trialled what I've got. Though maybe I'll roll 4d6 rather than 1d20, to give a range of 20-24 with a higher likelihood of a middling roll. Or even 2d12, my d12s don't see enough use... Well I've been advised to apply heat to improve bloodflow, so a warm bath will help. I suspect the salts might not make much difference, but they would make the bath nicer, so I might give that a go anyway, good shout. No - I wish! I don't actually know who the artist is off hand. The character is Donaar Blit'zen from Acquisitions Incorporated: The C Team; I was just googling art for that character and it came up. I have to go out in a second, will reply to this separately either later today or tomorrow (because I want to give the full explanation!). I've not played any of the Pathfinder computer games, so I can't really comment; which game was it? I usually do one in the morning and one in the evening (assuming that I do both in the same day). I do a lot of ancillary stuff for French though (my phone is set to French so I get French-language news stories, and I listen to French podcasts), and occasionally I listen to Dutch radio, so sometimes I'm going straight from one to another. I do sometimes find I'm reaching for a word in one language and end up pulling the word in the other one by mistake! Oo, A is fun. That might be more of a 10-year Nerdiversary thing (and it would be my first tattoo), but I'll let that idea percolate). I'll definitely do B (and you should too - just try a few OCRs and I'm sure you'll love them ). I'm not sure how my fiancée would feel about my being buried in a pile of panties , but actually a French audiobook is a great idea. Would make a good challenge reward... Well, just one set of shiny math rocks doesn't take up too much space... (Note: it'll never stay at just one) I lost that struggle a long time ago. I'm now at the stage of desperately avoiding buying gemstone dice, because they're mega bucks.

Oo, now that does sound good. If I ever run down my current tea supply I'll have to see if anyone ships their stuff internationally for a reasonable price.

Thank you, I shall try my very best to treat it with care. Good to have you!

Glad to see you here man - sometimes just showing up is enough.

Hey, like the new profile pic man! I injured my knee the other week whilst out for a run - the physio reckons it's torn cartilage. He seemed pretty confident that recovery could be within 6 weeks, so hopefully it'll just be this challenge cycle that I'll be doing a whole lot of physio and very little running. How are you doing?

My last 'regular saver' account finally paid out this week, so I'm now not racing to the bottom of my overdraft again. I had to keep a little more money back than I would have liked to balance everything, but I really hate the feeling of scaping at the bottom of my available funds so it was worth it. I still managed to put a chunk away into a new 1-year fixed savings account to get decent interest on it, just not quite as much as I would have liked. I'm also working a shift delivering flowers on Valentine's Day, so I'm hoping that extra money will cover a chunk of my credit card payment without needing to touch my other savings. It would be nice to leave all of the big purchases out of the equation and give my poor savings account a break for a little while!

This image really puts me in mind of Keg from Critical Role campaign 2: