The Glass Cannon Podcast - Cannon Fodder 2/21/24

Episode Date: February 21, 2024

Sydney Amanuel joins Joe on the Fod this week, and the two discuss their most anticipated stops on the upcoming tour, reactions from the "Sydney's Doing Math" drop, and their plans to spread managed democracy in Helldivers 2! In We Are Stupid, a closer examination of the Magus' Spellstrike ability, and in Listener Mail, we find out Sydney's favorite non-Pathfinder TTRPG! Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/Z8S_CT177Rk For more podcasts and livestreams, visit glasscannonnetwork.com and for hundreds of hours of exclusive shows and benefits, make your membership official and join Glass Cannon Nation today by becoming a subscriber at jointhenaish.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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you are listening to the glass cannon network the premier source for role-playing game entertainment. Welcome to Cannon Fodder, a behind-the-scenes look at the glass cannon network yo what is going on everybody welcome back to cannon fodder it is wednesday february 21st 2024 and i'm your good buddy joey o'brien and i'm sydney emmanuel i'm here too oh shit it's sydney emmanuel joining the show joining the fad we got a little uh troy on a mini vacay this week happens to be on the fad day i wonder if that's coincidence just trying to shirk his fad duties but i have been blessed with an incredible co-host by my side today. You know her. You love her.

She's been around forever on the Glass Cannon Network. Ladies and gentlemen, Sidney Emanuel. Thank you so much for hanging out, Sidney. The crowd goes wild. The crowd goes wild. I'm happy to be here. In my opinion, Troy can take a vacation any day, and I will gladly cover. Awesome.

Good to know, and I will take you up on that. I regret. And you will regret that. I regret saying that immediately. Scratch it from the record, please. I regret saying that immediately. It's awesome to have you on, Sid. Thank you so much for popping by.

I am looking forward to hanging out, catching up a little bit. We're going to talk news. We're going to talk some exciting streams you and I are going to be doing together. We're going to talk, man, we're going to talk social media. We're going to talk Glass Cannon podcast, you know, Gatewalkers, Asta, Lucky, everything's on the table today. I'm really looking forward to this spot. And then of course, we'll have a little We Are Stupid and round it out with listener mail. I'm sure I won't be in the We Are Stupid. Just want to preface that. I'm sure nothing I've done will be in there. Guaranteed. Hang in there, folks. Stick around to see if

Sydney and her character are mentioned at all in We Are Stupid. Kicking it off at the top, let's start with a quick catch-up from you. What's going on? How are you? What are you up to? How's life? I'm doing well. I have been busy.

Got a few projects coming up. I'm doing some design on a short film. I'm acting in a short film, different films. And I'm doing some video game stuff for a new podcast on ESR. And when I'm not doing that, I'm recording Legacy with you guys or the GCP, the podcast, the actual podcast at the studio. So I stay busy and playing some video games,

playing some fun stuff. Very, very busy. For the audio listeners, Sydney looks very professional today. She's got a little white collar situation on with, is that a sweater or a sweatshirt? It's a sweater. With a sweater. It's a sweatshirt. It's not a hoodie, a sweater or a sweatshirt? It's a sweater. With a sweater.

It's a sweatshirt. It's not a hoodie, but it's a sweatshirt. It's a sweatshirt. It's cool. It's got some, what is that, Korean or something characters on it? It's Japanese. It's Entity, the skate company. Ah, okay.

So skate company sweatshirt. Anyway, she came on and I was like, you look very nice. And she said, I went to work today. I left my house today. It's rare. Good for you. Thank nice. And she said, I went to work today. I left my house today. It's rare. Good for you. Thank you. Good for you, Sydney.

That's great that you're keeping so busy. These films that you're working on, either being on or doing production design and stuff on, can people see these anytime soon? Are these a year away? Are they half a year away? I don't know what the timelines are for the kind of projects you're working on. It's so hard to tell with independent films. Sometimes they come out. They just, you know, they try to do their festival circuit runs.

That's always the thing. Everybody wants to like submit it to festivals. So until they start doing that, you don't see it. It doesn't see the light of day for the public. Then after it makes or breaks it kind of in the festival world, sometimes they just plop it on YouTube. Like at that point, you know, they can just put it online. And then other times they try to distribute it with, if it's like a horror film, they try to go through shutter or, you know, places like that. So it's a little more like upper echelon. They don't just put it on Vimeo or YouTube. These ones, hard to say,

don't know. But hopefully, I mean, I always put something on Instagram if it's out in the world because I want people to see it. Where do people follow you on Instagram? They could find me at Sydney Gale on Instagram. Same as my Twitch. If you ever want to see me stream video games, also Sydney Gale. And for those confused. How do you spell Gale? I was about to say, for those confused, my name Sydney is spelled like Australia.

There's two Ys. My middle name Gale, also with a Y. G-A-Y-L-E. Nice. That's gay with an L-E. Thanks, everybody. That's Gay-la. That's Gay-la.

That's fantastic. It's so funny. People could easily, easily, without that clarification, misspell both your first and your last name while looking for you on social, and then give up immediately because that's how quick the human brain will just shut you off. Speaking of the human brain and how ridiculous it is, you also happen to be the centerpiece of the single most watched short that we've ever produced here at the Glass Cat Network. We had a clip essentially go viral.

Essentially. It's viral. It's viral. If you are listening to this or watching this right now and you have not seen the Sydney's Doing Math short that went out on our, it's on our shorts on YouTube. It's also on TikTok,ok etc uh it it is blown up sydney describe to the people uh what happened man i never thought i always thought that like our stuff will blow up you know we're in the ttrpg community we've got great clips i

think we've got great content i'm biased but our tiktok's very funny our editing you know cj's a wonderful editor we we do a lot of great work with the clips we put out. But this one, especially, it was a shock to us in the studio when Skid did the drop that Nick Lowe made, which if you haven't heard it, it's very funny. It's about when I pause to do math and how I take a little bit longer than some people. It's great. But it was a shock to all of us and we were cracking up and it just, the timing was perfect. It was totally by accident. Like people asked in the comments, did you guys plan this?

You know, is this a whole thing? No. And we put it on Tik TOK and boy, howdy, the amount of texts, Joe, that I have gotten from friends,

random people who aren't in the TTRPG community, who are like, I just saw you on my For You page on TikTok. That's you in that clip. And an old friend who I knew. These are just not TTRPG people at all. An old friend from Massachusetts, Facebook messaged me and said, I just saw you on TikTok. I wasn't sure if it was you, but then they said your name and I knew it was you.

So I've been cracking up. It's great. name and I knew it was you. So I've been cracking up. It's great. It's very funny. And I'm grateful that the clip is about how dumb I am and how slow and bad. But the best thing, the best thing is not only am I just like confused, I wasn't even confused about the math. I was trying to find something on the character sheet, but the timing was like too good, but I was looking for it. But not only are people like, ah, she's bad at math. They also don't realize we're playing Pathfinder because they're not familiar with the glass cannon. They don't know we play Pathfinder. So they're all commenting that I don't know the stats of a katana in D&D 5e. And they're like, 1d6? Is she reflavoring a scimitar. This is terrible. She's doing a terrible job. And I'm just dying inside reading those comments knowing I'm just like, no, no, no. It's Pathfinder second edition.

No, please. No, it is. It is amazing. Like one of the things that jumped out at me from the comments is those kind of comments. It continues to amaze me not that so many people, so many more people play Dungeons & Dragons, the branded game, as opposed to Pathfinder. That's not a surprise to any of us. What's such a surprise to me is that so many of those people don't even know there's another game. Like they don't even know any exist.

Yeah. And like they don't – they're exist. Yeah. And like they they don't. They're not like in D&D. The thing is this. You know what I mean? They're just like a katana is a D8. Yes. Like period. Like a katana uses your decks.

Yes. Period. End of sentence. We're not playing that game. And it's just so funny how prevalent it is. Like it doesn't even occur to you that anyone could play anything else. I think many people in those comments, if you said, like, it's a different TTRPG, they would go, what's a TTRPG? I play Dungeons and Dragons.

I don't know what you're talking about. I don't understand that TT game. But you know what? I feel like we're doing the lord's work i'm really happy that that clip went went so viral because so many people i saw were like i'm gonna check you guys out i'm gonna check out pathfinder second edition oh i didn't even know about that you know blah blah blah i only play that was cool yeah i'm gonna play it it was cool it was it was seen in real time you know people like and then and also like along with that, I also got I thought it was really great to see how many people came out of the woodwork and were like, that is me.

Like, that is me at my game table. You know, and it's got to like it's got to feel good to know that like tons of people struggle with basic math in the heat of the moment looking at die. Like there was one comment about, you you know some something along the lines of you know I can I could do all this math all day in my head but show me a die that says you know six three and four and I'm just like man and my brain completely shuts down I just cracked up I was like that is so funny I felt I felt very seen a lot of people were like oh man I want my GM to make a custom drop for me at the table because this is exactly how I feel.

So I'm glad I feel seen. I'm glad they feel seen. I do it for you. That's awesome. That's awesome. Well, hopefully you'll see some of these people. You'll get more and more comments about this as we hit the road. I mean, we're going pretty soon on tour.

It's crazy. Starting internationally. I know it's not. We're less than a month. We are less than a month from heading to Toronto. Talk to me about the tour on your end of things.

Have you been to Canada? Have you been to Toronto? I have been to Canada when I was a kid. Long time ago. I went to the Thousand. And not since. No, not since.

I went to the Thousand Islands. So I was on the East Coast, but never to Toronto. I went to Montreal once. And I'm pumped. I'm not. Yeah, me too, man. There's so many new places we're going this year, which is really exciting. Places I've never been to, like Toronto, never been to Vancouver, really pumped for the Canada stuff, getting to travel internationally with the GCN and getting to see those folks who have maybe not been able to come to the States for shows. That's super cool.

I'm super excited to meet all the, uh, Canadians. That's the term that I made up. Uh, but yeah, other than that, uh, I'm super pumped for Austin as well. I've never been to Austin. Um, and never been to Austin. No, never been. Austin. That seems strange because you travel a lot and you seem like an Austin type. I knew you were going to

say that. Don't I seem like an Austin type? I don't know what that means. Also, your name is G-A-Y-L-E? Yeah. Okay, because it was misspelled at the beginning of this show. No, it wasn't. It was just G-A-L-E.

Oh, man. Well, that's on me. I didn't even catch that. Bad job. No, that's on me, too. Bad job, O'Brien. Sorry about that. Just noticed that I corrected it.

It's hilarious that we made a point about talking about it, too. It is. So heading to Canada for the – or heading to Toronto for the first time together, so that's awesome. Have you been? Really looking forward to that. No, I've never been to Toronto. I have been to Montreal. So I went to Niagara Falls when I was a kid and just sort of like stepped over for a little

bit and then went back. And then when I was in, I want to say my late 20s-ish, I went just with my sister on like a little 4th of July, like just sort of touristy, like let's go somewhere we've never been for a couple of days thing. And we went, she at this time, she was in graduate school in Syracuse. So I went up there, picked her up and we just drove up to Montreal for a couple of nights. It was super, super fun. Did you eat poutine?

What's that? Did you eat poutine? Oh, of course. Yes. I really dug Montreal. I was like, this is so cool. It's very, very different than, you know than your average American city that you go to. And so I was like, oh, you get a little taste of Europe here like in North America.

It was kind of dope. And then always wanted to go to Toronto. Not that it would be – I hear Toronto is the most American-ish city. But I'm just excited to go because I know how many Canadian nation members have traveled for years to all of our shows. And it's time for us to go to them for once, right? So I'm very excited to do a show on their home turf and just see a whole crowd full of Canadians. And then Vancouver. Never been to Vancouver.

And then Vancouver. Never been to Vancouver. I've got a really good friend in Vancouver who has made multiple trips down to our Seattle show. So I'm excited to go to that show and see him there and everything. And what about any of the other shows? Because we just announced a whole big slate of them. Is there anything else that jumps out at you in terms of cities you haven't been to before or that you're excited to see again? Yeah.

I mean, Austin, definitely. Never been there. Very excited for the food. The people. Everybody has told me over the years, like, go to Yeah. I mean, Austin definitely never been there. Very excited for the food. The people, everybody has told me over the years, like, go to Austin. You'll love Austin. So what better time than to do a show? Kansas City, excited for that.

Everybody was telling us to go. And hey, we listened. I've never been. I'm really excited. And then Portland, even though I've been, I have an affinity for Portland. I really like Portland. And I haven't done a show there with Glass Cannon. I know you guys have been there before.

Troy swore you would never go back. Well, times are changing. Troy swears a lot of things. Troy swears a lot, period. But, yeah, so I'm pumped for Portland. Are you excited to go back to Portland? Do you have a hatred like Troy does? No, I really like Oregon, and I'm really excited to go back to the Pacific Northwest. I love it in general.

Yeah, sure. I love the niche there. It's them. It's St. Paul niche. By the way, Minneapolis St. Paul niche. Oh, yeah. Got to tell you. They're the best.

You're incredible. VIP is almost sold out already in St. Paul, Nash. Oh, yeah. Gotta tell you. They're the best. You're incredible. VIP is almost sold out already in St. Paul. No way. Yeah, a note to anybody listening or watching or that's thinking about going to that show, it's almost done. Whoa. So you better grab your VIP ticket ASAP. Yeah, nothing else is selling quite this fast. So, yeah, back to St. Paul.

We love everybody there. But, yeah, there to St. Paul. We love everybody there. But, yeah, there's like these big pockets of niche, right? And one of them is certainly the upper Midwest there. And then another one is the Pacific Northwest. I love seeing those people. So very much looking forward to going back there. Yeah, Minneapolis, too, I should say. Always a pleasure to go there.

The shows are great and the people are great. And, hey, if we catch a baseball game, that that'd be even greater. I mean, it's kind of have a special place. Isn't that your first show? That's your first glass cannon live was, was in that same venue, the Amsterdam hall,

the Holland bar or whatever. And we continue to go back there. Cause it's just such a dope venue for us to, to play. That was before I even had a character. I played winter Klaxa. Oh, that's right.

Yeah. At the, at the point in the adventure that you were at for Strange Aeons and yeah, it'll be so nice to go back. I love that venue. Yeah, it's going to be awesome. All right, let's keep it moving here. We got a lot to get to. I want to talk about Giant Slayer or Giant Slayer. I want to talk about Glass Can of Podcast and Listener Mail and We Are Stupid, but

got to talk about the biggest news on my docket right now is a stream that's happening today. Today, live on the main channel at the Glass Cannon on Twitch. Sydney is hopping on with me to stream a game that she is a beast at, apparently. And I stink. Tell them what we're streaming. Tell them what we're streaming. Tell them what we're streaming. We, not only Joe and I, but if you're tuning, if you're listening in the morning, get ready

because at noon, it's going to be me, Joe, Mary Lou, Paula Demme, and we're playing Hell Divers 2. That's right. We downloaded the new game and yes, we're waiting to get into the servers like everybody else. Stars, they're just like you. Yep. Come hang out with us while we wait to get into servers.

It's going to be awesome. For those that are not familiar, I mean, Helldivers 2 has blown up everywhere. It's huge. It's the buzz for a co-op shooter. You know, great time, supposedly a fantastic time. I'm very excited to play it with you guys. I don't know much of anything about it. I've turned it on. I've gotten into it a little bit, just

to get through the tutorial, and literally after we record this, you and I are going to connect our accounts and make sure that we're all friended up and everything so that we can get squad mates together for the dive at noon Eastern on Wednesday. Noon Eastern. Today

we are going to be playing. And if you heard this a little too late and you missed it, go check out the VOD. I'm sure it's going to be a shit show. I'm really looking forward to it. Mary Lou is fired up. Paula Deming is, I think, nervous. Scared. Scared.

Just scared. Man, it's going to be so much fun. I'm really looking forward to it. If you're listening to this in the morning, you're making your coffee, set a reminder. Be patriotic to Super Earth and support your local hell divers. Okay? We're doing it for you. We're doing it for liberty.

For liberty. Yeah, I have my notes here from McD's, like the things to not forget to talk about. Don't forget to let them know you're spreading manage a democracy this afternoon. Sydney, Paula Deming, Mary Lou and I are going to put a squad of four together to drop down onto a planet somewhere where liberty is threatened so we can spread the joys of freedom. I mean, this is going to be amazing. It's going to be chaotic. Please watch.

Yeah, it's going to be crazy. Please watch. And what else? Okay, a couple more things on the deck before we get into the GCP. I don't know if you know this, Sydney, but our subscription service that we started up when we moved off of Patreon, we've just initiated as of last week a 30-day free trial. Oh, amazing. We've just initiated, as of last week, a 30-day free trial. Oh, amazing.

So if you have been thinking about getting on and you're not sure, you don't know what kind of content's on there, you want to test out the campaigns that are on there, see if you like them or not without spending a dime, hop on and get on the 30-day free trial that we have now. So check that out. That's going to be awesome. And then, oh, Nashville. We didn't talk about Nashville. So Nashville's on the tour. Yes. And then combined in Nashville is going to be the first ever Nashville retreat, which is going to be a bunch of added gaming and hanging out in addition to the live show. So look out for information on that on our website at glasscanonetwork.com.

I'm so excited for that. You can find out. The link is supposed to drop today to buy tickets. So if it is on there, go ahead and grab your tickets before they get sold out. This is going to be a very limited supply from what I understand. Very, very limited supply. But that's going to be really fun to hang out with the nation there. All right. Let's get down to business.

This episode, episode 22 of Gatewalkers, we have just come out of the Oculi fight and we are heading into the – we head into the stump, right? What we know of as the stump and then we get swarmed by these tooth fairies with pliers in their hands. Let me just ask you first. I don't really know your experience with swarms. What do you think about swarms? Do you deal with swarms in D&D 5e? Is that something you come across often? I don't really know your experience with swarms. What do you think about swarms? Do you deal with swarms in D&D 5e? Is that something you come across often? I don't know.

Yeah, you do. A lot of the time, I think the number one sort of general knowledge of the swarm is if you hurt the individual, it hurts the swarm. But it's a little different, I think, in Pathfinder because you really need – I don't know. I feel like a lot of the time swarms have these special abilities like they have DR or they have resistances to certain things or only magic gets through. They have resistance to bludgeoning or whatever. Yeah. I think that they – if you boil it down, I guess they essentially have resistances to anything that is single target. Yeah, right. And then weaknesses to anything that is single target. Yeah.

Right. And then weaknesses to anything that is AOE. Right. You know, that is multi-target. So AOE things get like exponentially bigger and individual things get a lot smaller. But like, I don't know, I just feel like we're never quite built for AOE damage, you know, like. We got into a hard spot too.

We entered this tree stump. The room we were in was quite small so to also have a swarm like even if we had you know skid buggles is pretty powerful and he can do some like fire ice stuff even if he had some sort of aoe fire or ice spell that he was going to shoot off it was going to hit all of us yeah it was going to hit us yeah it was tight quarters for sure two so like you know you don't want to hurt your part it's it's less beneficial uh to try to do a big aoe where you could potentially hurt your party members without healing capabilities um so yeah it was tricky for this with the tooth fairies but then also swarms always have these messed up abilities

where they like release a poisonous gas or you like whatever. And these tooth fairies had one of those, too, which was when they die, they explode. They explode into some sort of, I don't know, like, I don't know if it was like ichor or like a vapor or something that that makes you sickened it just makes you sickened but troy had built it all up to make us think that it was going to be like 40 points of damage 42 or or like a deadly poison or something like that and he played he played us like a fiddle yeah let's be honest i was gonna say it was kind of bullshit i mean i could say i could say whatever I want. Say whatever I want. Kate, you reminded me that Kate rolled, Zephyr rolled a nat 20 on a knowledge check or on a perception check? Recall knowledge, yeah. Recall knowledge. On these tooth fairies to kind of figure out what was going on.

And Troy, like, she rolled a nat 20, and Troy was like, oh, they've got a death row. You know, if you take know if you it's a character killer i believe was he said character killer which he always says but it's so hard to know if he means it or not yeah we were like the room is small we were like backing up we were trying to get away we were like it's gonna die it's gonna explode and i think i forget who but they were just like i can't move out of it like i, I'll sacrifice myself. You know, I think it was you, Joe. I think you were like, I'll just stay near it. And we were like, no, you can't.

You can't. It certainly made for some increased drama. So if that's what he was going for, then bravo. But yeah, it was nothing exploded. We were all like, and he's like, and you're all fine. We're like, you're a son of a bitch. Yeah, I find swarms in general to be like so frustrating. So frustrating.

And they seem to throw them in every adventure. Like there are always swarms lurking about. But I'm glad we fought through it just enough, just in time to open up a door to go deeper in. And you, Asta, opens the door. I always open the door. And on the other side, you see what? You saw it first before any of us saw it on Foundry. Gosh, Foundry is so great with the dynamic lighting and when you enter a space.

So, yeah, Asta stepped in first. Immediate player regret i like stepped in and i saw i saw a big centaur woman who was like decked in armor she had like two spears and a sword maybe a bow on her back and i immediately sydney the player was like oopsie back out of the room uh but i walked in and, you know, in character, I had to be like, hi, you know, you see me. I'm not invisible. Tried to play it cool. I always try to go for like a diplomacy thing with Troy's enemies. Yeah.

Never, ever, ever works. It like never works. But I appreciate and applaud the effort. I think that that's it's a good thing. Matthew is like an expert at the diplomatic character he always plays such diplomatic characters but troy doesn't like role play so he steps on us let's just cut to the killing yeah well in this case what happened sorry go ahead i know i was gonna say that's basically what happened asta stepped in and the centaur uh like, who enters the domain of like Kineppo the Slim? And we all were like, oh, oopsie.

She's not on our side. Can't be right. Yeah. So there was no talking and she was like, you're not worthy. Yeah. She's all like, she's like a serial killer, basically. Oh, yeah. She was psycho. all like she's like a serial killer basically oh yeah she was like that that's what he implies is

like she's she watches her victims she hunts and learns everything about them so that she can just like pick them apart when it's time to murder them and she's like and i guarantee you i will take my time with you posthumously i mean it is so terrifying and uh i'm not gonna i can't scan ahead uh but i want to tell everybody that i uh i definitely like told troy i was like just in case you forgot we're second level yeah like i have no idea what you're putting into these aps i don't know what's actually in there or what you're coming up with, but we're second level. I'm very scared of this fight. Especially because, not alone. Like, not alone. We're also dealing with

some sort of like automaton or something. Yeah, there's like a robot ball thing. Really important piece of this episode that you seemingly left out for whatever reason, Joe. I recall in the Tooth Fairy fight that Brother Ramius lost a tooth.

No, no. That was a flavor thing. You made it up. You made it up. I was just dying. I love making Joe mad. He did not lose a tooth. They tried.

They tried to pull his tooth out. They didn't get it because I think Troy said it takes like three routes, but they can. They have the ability. Three actions, yeah. But me and Kate kept going, oh, no, brother Ramious, you lost a tooth. You have to talk like this for the rest of it. Joe was so mad having none of it. He was like, no, I don't.

I don't like it. I didn't lose a tooth. I like you disrespecting Ramious. What you would call it. I definitely saw some comments on that on YouTube. Thank you for those that comment on the tubes. I appreciate you guys. New fan art.

New fan art needed. ASAP. Somebody said they were just absolutely losing it at YouTube, like just bullying me, whatever, making fun of me as getting a lisp because of this missing tooth. Speaking of which, I'll throw one out here. And I liked this comment. This is from Snuzzle Bumble on YouTube. Comment said, I love that this swarm literally forces everyone to move each round. I've noticed in some games people are still in the mindset of just wanting to stand in one place the entire combat.

I thought that was a really good observation. And it just highlights what we have found we really enjoy about 2E as opposed to 1E is how stuck in place you would feel because it was so optimized to not move that even when it was deadly or even when it was a huge risk, you just didn't move because to stay was so much more powerful. And now it does feel like a much more fluid battlefield, and it's really fun to play that way. And positioning is so important and really a fun thing to play around with. And you get the third action. Totally, especially too because Kate's character is a monk, and she has her flurry of blows, but it's through her arrows. And she's super proficient with her bow.

So there's always this level of like backing up to create distance and stuff. I think our party handles that pretty well. All right. Before we get into We Are Stupid, let's talk about Asta for a second. I mean, we talked about her a little bit in the studio, Fahd, but I'd just like to continue to explore that now that you've had more time sort of transitioning from your initial fighter build into magus how are you let me take your temperature right now on the class so far obviously you're only second level but how are you enjoying the the play style that you've had with asta so far i i'm enjoying it a lot i think i'm still discovering the classic pitfalls of sort of

character building i'm only at second level but there's certain things i'm starting to realize with the magus and i know i think the last fad you guys talked about this and i was jumping in the chat pissing everybody off but uh it's some of it is just very confusing wording on things and i have to be really on top of like what abilities i'm using at what time because for instance the cascade uh the arcane cascade stance i'm very new to stances like i don't play monks often so that's a whole part of it and i get all these boons but if i don't use it i can two-hand my weapon so it's sort of like and i have to keep track of my action economy because you know certain things i can't do before other things so it's sort of like – and I have to keep track of my action economy because certain things I can't do before other things.

So it's definitely not like a – I would quote-unquote easy. If I played a fighter, it's a little more streamlined. It's a little simpler. I can do this and then I can hit or I can take a full round. I can hit. Yeah, yeah. And if you remember, we were out together to a little lunch in the city when you mentioned that you were thinking about maybe playing a magus. And if you remember, I was just like, come on.

I literally think. Don't do it. I literally think Joe rolled his eyes. Right. And it had nothing to do with anything but that. That like I didn't know the first thing about the class. It is super, super complicated. And I was going to be, I was just seeing down the line all of the we are stupid emails we were going to get.

Because, you know, it's the nature of brand new classes. They're really hard to play well the first time, you know. I like a challenge, you know, and I love to try. The whole point of playing TTRPGs is to try new things. You know, you want to try a new character and when you have a character die perfect opportunity to just balls to the wall just try something new um so i'm having a lot of fun with it and i'm i mean now i'm having the real fun where i'm like when i get to level five like yeah wait do you see yeah yeah it's exciting, but I'm just also trying to be careful not to kill my second character. So how are you feeling about that with some time having passed?

Are you are you like super into Asta right now? Kind of feeling like you've moved on? Are you a little are you still have some lingering feelings for Lucky? Yeah, I miss Lucky. I mean, I watched that clip clip we have a clip too of the moment that i rolled in that one oh yeah and like it's brutal i i'm not embarrassed but it's so raw i'm just i was so bummed i was so sad um and now i'm like obviously i'm like yeah whatever it's fine like i have my new character who i really like. But again, I think the thing that's the most bummer is I never got to bring up anything. All this cool backstory, all these cool things that were supposed to come out naturally through our gameplay and character interactions with Lucky. They just didn't get to happen.

It's like writing your first short story or like novel and then you're just scrapping it and you're like, well, I guess I'll start over. And nobody saw it. Nobody read it. Nobody saw it. Well, you don't have to answer this if you don't want to. But it makes me wonder if – are there any elements to Asta that are kind of drawn from Lucky at All, things that didn't come out that you were like, you know what? I could still kind of use some of that whether it's's personality stuff or background stuff or is there anything like that? Or it's just completely fresh, new, you kind of dropped everything and started over? Honestly, I feel like I dropped everything and started over. I had such a clear picture of Lucky.

So to like dilute her into a new character just didn't seem like it made sense at all. I guess the only thing that was similar was I still wanted to play a sort of like animal folk type character. I was so excited about cat folk. And then I was like, well, I'm not going to play a human. So I picked a kitsune. That would be ridiculous. That would be silly. What kind of idiot would play a human?

Joe loves humans. I love them all. Well, that's not true. I don't love them all. But I like, I don't know. You know, Baldur's Gate 3 has got me a bit like off the human track. What are you playing in Baldur's Gate 3? No comment.

Can't comment on it. There's reasons. But I just like – that world is so rich with how few humans are like part of the main vibe of it. The NPCs, the other party members, like there's so few. So diverse. That is awesome. It's really cool to just like, you know, feel out all those different kinds of ancestries interacting that way. Anyway, it has me thinking a lot more look i've i've been called out on that before but i think that that's i think it's when you examine it it's an incorrect

assessment of what i like to do and what i like to play but it's based around an idea that is a correct assessment which is that like i like the simple things i like the easy path i like the you know i like getting things spoon fedfed to me as Troy says. And some of that is – there's definitely some truth to that. But if you look back at my characters, like there aren't that many humans. There really aren't. I would always try to go against it. And then I kind of started coming back to it and was like, I've spent so long as not a human that now I do want to play some humans.

And so I've really been enjoying Brother Ramius for that reason. I thought about going human for this, too, because I feel like I'm the opposite. I usually don't. And now I'm kind of like, oh, there's some interesting ways to be a human in a world full of these other, you know, characters and races and ancestries. But, yeah, as for the Asta Lucky thing, I think I was just – I didn't get enough of the non-human background. So I wanted to carry that over. That was the only thing I wanted to carry over. And it's kind of fun.

It's like who are you? A rare ancestry. Yeah. Yeah. What's your place in the world, you know, if you're sort of a lesser known ancestry, more rare. Yeah. I mean is Asta – so you say that Asta – and again, these are kind of things you can say like you got to find out on the show buddy but like is asta you describe asta as being from the wildwood but like is that like born and raised in the wildwood because she definitely seems to have

some eastern influence you know and especially with her training and her use of the katana and all that kind of stuff did she travel here but hasn't told us that yet? Like, what do you mean? She grew up in the woods by herself. Where's her family? What's going on here? I mean, it'll come out in the game, hopefully, like as we talk. But this is why people listen to the FOD.

Exactly. Give them a little behind-the-scenes action. Sprinkling some info in. So she is from the Verdurian Forest of Taldor which a lot of kits kitsune are from like i think three major areas okay this area specifically is like a more modern um kind of like metropolis kitsune town so okay it's it's in the forest but it's like it's not by any means like extremely rural it's to them pretty urban um but yeah so it's like she has her family i mean who knows what's going on now but like she grew up there

she has her family um and i guess what's the equivalent what's like a rural i guess new jersey like she didn't grow up in new york city she grew up in like not even Hoboken, a little further. Where are you from? Where you live, Joe? Cranford. Sure. Let's call it Cranford. But yeah, so it's a little less metropolis.

So yeah, she had access to, you know, big city kind of stuff. Yeah, she's read books. She knows people and places. She didn't just come out of a bunker in the middle of the woods. Yeah. Okay. woods. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. But how far away is the Wildwood from there?

Ballpark. I mean, is it like really far? You're asking me an actual map question, and I don't want to say the wrong thing. I feel like it's pretty far. Okay. So, yeah, that's why I feel like she has traveled at some point. She has. She definitely has.

And whether she did that solo or with family, I'm curious to find out. I'm going to start digging into us a little bit in our gameplay. Have Brother Rainus spark up a conversation. Sit down by the campfire. Pull up a log. She's an open book. Pull up a log. Pull up a log.

All right. Let's get into We Are Stupid here before we get some listener mail. Sing us in, Nick. Sydney loves you so some listener mail. Sing us in, Nick. Sydney loves you so much right now. Sing us in, Nick. It's time for us to mail. You gotta get your bro's out on it. It's time for us to mail.

You gotta cue that fucking thing. Love you, Nick. Love you, Nick. Love you, Nick. I was so excited to get to that. I played Listener Mail before I did We Are Stupid. I know. I was loving it, though. I wasn't going to stop you. I mean, I am really stupid.

Wow. All right. Well, we'll come back to Listener Mail in a second. Because there's actually just a couple quick things here. To clarify, these are from Professor Eric. One, Sydney, you do not hold a charge in Spellstrike in 2E like it used to be in 1E. We just talked about that a little bit. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You don't have to hold it, move up. If you miss, it stays in there. None of that. It is just – that was only a 1E thing. It's gone in 2E. It's all part of that one action. It's all part of the – or it's all part of the or what's two actions right two actions drawn two actions drawn but it's like that it's all at that same

time um he did he did weigh in and say that we did get stunning fist correct against the swarm they are capable to be stunned however it does have the incapacitate trait. We mentioned this. I'm not sure if Troy wanted to just let it get stunned or if it's a little bit higher level and shouldn't have been stunned. But I think it would have needed to critically fail in order to get stunned. So, yeah, just clarifying on that. But that could have been a GM call at the last second. There was – oh, yeah. There was also like some online chatter of Zephyr being able to flurry with the bow in hand. He's just clarifying that that is correct, but she can't do it when she's in the monastic archer stance.

So when she chooses to go into that stance, which is, I believe, the only way that she can flurry with her bow. Yeah. She cannot do melee attacks from that stance. She has to come out of that stance. She can't flurry in melee. But if she is not in that stance, she can shoot her bow, just not with a flurry. She can shoot her bow just like normal. And then she could totally like shoot her bow and then punch somebody in the face or do a flurry of blows of literally hitting them physically with the bow and then kneeing them in the groin, that kind of thing.

All capable of doing that as long as you don't first enter that monastic archer stance. That is when it starts to limit what you're able to do. Interesting. So then you would have to leave the stance which can be done we determined by a free action of dropping the bow so if you just drop the bow you can get right back into it so anyway just to clarify that there were some comments on that on the youtube uh video and maybe elsewhere as well i'm not sure if they were on the discord um all right let's get into asta here oh also he mentioned something about buggles doing a point of splash damage, and he's not sure where that splash damage came from.

So we just have to talk to Skid about, like, where was this splash damage? Not sure if that was a carryover from Aldo or something. So I'll talk to Skid about that. Interesting. Let's focus in on our mages here real quick before we get back to the listener mail. I'm shocked I'm in this section, everybody. Unheard of. Go on, Joe.

I don't know if you know this. I don't know how I didn't catch this, but apparently you spellstruck twice without the action to recharge the spellstrike. No way. Way. At least that's word on the street. That's unlike me. But you know what? It is unlike me because we've talked about this at length.

You know this rule. I know. I know. We've talked about this. You told it to me. I know. I'm shocked I did this, but maybe it was just throughout the round of combat when it came back around to me. Maybe I just forgot because it took a while.

I don't know. But I do know this rule very well. You have to recharge. You have to take an action and you have to recharge. And we specifically talked about this because we learned you can't recharge on your previous turn. Then when it comes around, then do your spell strike. It has to be within the same round. So basically it's a three.

Spell striking is pretty much technically three actions. I don't think that's correct what you said. It is. I think you're mixing up spell strike with entering the arcade cascade stance. No, no, no. Also, when you recharge your spell strike, it has to be in the round. You have to either do the concentration, which takes takes one action or you have to uh what's the other one have just cast a spell um and then you can do a two action spell strike so in my mind

spell strike almost takes three actions because no matter what you're going to have to recharge it by concentrating or casting a spell then you can spell strike um wait are you sure you're not mixing that up with our how do you enter the arcade cascade stance uh i believe i just you know what i'm i'm i think you're mixing them up because isn't that where you have to have just cast as a spell uh or you have to your let your most recent action was used to cast a spell or something else. Hold on. Totes. Your most recent action to cast a spell.

Oh, to cast a spell or make a spell strike. And the spell strike is you recharge it. I'm bringing it up here now. I'm bringing it up, too. I'm bringing it up. I'm going to throw it right up on stream. it up here now i'm bringing it up too i'm bringing it up after you spell strike you can't do it again until you recharge your spell strike as a single action you can also recharge your spell strike when you cast a conflux spell that takes at least one action to cast yes no matter what you still have to so they're very similar arcane cascade is your most recent action, cast a spell or make a spell strike.

Right, but you have to do that in the same turn. This is not in this, it's been reworded, I believe. It's not in this one, but it's been reworded to say your most recent action this turn to cast a spell or make a spell strike. I'm pretty sure. You can't loop it around to the next round. And then the, what was the other one? The spell strike. Yeah. So I'm going to bring that up in a second, but the spell strike, I believe you can. So let's say you move. So here's my example. You move and then spell strike. Yeah. You can use your single action to recharge it in the next round.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. You would have to. And if you did not move and you just did a spell strike, you could then recharge it with your third action and then spell strike again in the next round.

Oh, interesting. Right? I don't see why not. No, that's what I thought. But I wonder if that's what I messed up. How could I have possibly done spell strike twice in a round no you did i think you did a spell strike and then the next round i think you just did another spell strike and moved like like you were like all right i spell strike and then i move away from the swarm it was

something like that and then i hadn't spent that action to recharge it. It's a very easy mistake to make. I'm not surprised at all that we made it. Yeah. I'm surprised about is that like that we didn't notice it because you and I had discussed it so much because it seemed like a very important balancing mechanic to the spell strike because it's such an awesome ability. mechanic to the spell strike because it's such an awesome ability if it's if it's not going to be if it's not going to be limited in like you know per day or whatever like that you know um how do we how do we balance it and so uh yeah so the frequency is you can use it until it's recharged you know what i mean yeah and um this is what i love you can't do it again until you recharge your spell strike as a single action besides it has the concentrate trait.

You also recharge your spell strike when you cast a conflux spell that takes at least one action to cast. Casting a focus spell of another type doesn't recharge your spell strike. Now, this comes up in Professor Eric's thing. Now, I don't know if you don't want me to talk about this. Are you aware of something called dimensional assault? Yes. Okay. if you don't want me to talk about this are you aware of something called dimensional assault yes okay so what professor i'm not going to blow it up because i want you to be able to use it on the show and like uh and for and i think people are going to love this thing i'm very excited but if you use that that recharges your spell strike yes you don't just have to not do anything you

can use something that is very very unique this is unique to the laughing shadow hybrid study but the thing is the conflict spell is so it is limited like spell strike does have his limitations you can basically use a focus point point um in your focus pool to cast your conflict spells which are like these special learned spells but i only have one focus point so like i can cast this once and use my really cool ability and then I get my spell strike back, but I don't get to use it until I rest again.

So it's cool for a moment, but if I deplete my focus pool, I can't use it again in a combat until I get my focus points back. So that is a really cool one because then I don't have to cast a spell or do a different thing before my spell strike. I can use my Conflux spell.

Yes. That is so cool. I can't wait to see that. One more thing real quick, and that is regarding combining the strike and spell strike damage pools before determining immunities, weaknesses, and resistances. Professor Eric, thank you for weighing in on this because I was wrong. I was stupid on this one. Thank you for weighing in on this because I was wrong. I was stupid on this one.

Though Professor Eric says I do believe it is a somewhat open question, but I feel the consensus is generally on the side of keeping the damage separate, which is what Troy's interpretation was. You hit and your strike resolves and then the spell damage goes through. In this case, both hits would have been reduced by the swarm's resistance, which is the ruling that we reached in the show. For when this could help, an example of when this could help the party is if you had flaming runes, for instance, and you cast a fire spell, you could proc a fire weakness twice on a single creature in one spell strike. His experience so far with this is that it tends to favor the PCs more than it hurts them. It just, in this case, it happened to be a bad scenario where it had resistance to like every kind of damage except splash. That really hurt us in this case. But most of the time,

being able to split the damage from different types is going to work out. So that was just weighing in. Yeah. So I'm happy with that interpretation for now. And I say we go with it. All right. We're running short on time.

Let's get some listener mail in here, guys. Thank you so much for writing in on listener mail. If you haven't before, or even if you have before, I don't care. If you want to ask us a question, email us at contact at glasscannonetwork.com or go to the website. Follow the Cannon Fodder page right to Listener Mail and you can submit from there. Today, we've got one from YouTube and we've got one that came in from the website from YouTube,

Paralyzed Kid. By the way, can someone explain to me why they're always playing with headphones on? I get the mics being needed for recording, but why do you need to hear? What do you need to hear while sitting together at a table? Good question. Do you want to answer this one? Yeah. Well, for one, it makes the audio so much cleaner. So we're not yelling across the table, like speaking at a normal volume through an audio format for people that listen to the podcast is very important.

If we can't tell what what our volume is in our monitor headphones, it would make for horrible audio for the podcast because we all would be different levels talking really loud or maybe you have to be able to hear yourself so that you can keep yourself in line or in check with however what most other people's volume is. Now, of course, I'm guilty of breaking that all the time. Joe from yelling. But it's, you know, if the headphones were off, it would be worse. Let's just say that. And also it's for Skid's wonderful drops because we have to separate the audio, again, for the podcast and everything. You got to separate that audio out from all of our microphones and stuff so nothing, no wires get crossed. So we would never hear Skid's amazing drops

like Nick Lowe singing, uh-oh, Sydney's doing math. Oh no, oh no, Sydney's doing math. And also all the music. So all of the background music that you hear during the show, we hear it live. We don't put that in in post-production. We hear it live. And we've always, I've always been a big prop don't put that in in post-production. We hear it live. And I've always been a

big proponent of having that music in because I feel like it invigorates us live when we listen to it while we're playing. And that's Joe on the ones and twos as we're doing it. He's changing the vibe up and helping us get immersed, which is really cool. So that's why we do headphones. Alright, one more here from Jack.

Thank you, Jack, for writing in. It says, thanks for all the last three of the years. With Game Garage, New Game Hoodists, and Labs, you've all had the opportunity to try out new to you systems. Which systems have you really enjoyed? Which were just all right? And what systems do you want to try out? Personally, I think Lancer has mech-based Takti Joe written all over it. I'm not familiar with Lancer, but I'll have to check that out.

Sydney, of all these years we've been playing different games together, what has jumped out to you system-wise as something that you really like? Or what's jumped out as something you're like, I'm good on that. I don't really like that system very much. You know, I don't have many that I dislike. They're just different. I think I've said it before. I'll say it again. many that I dislike. They're just different. I think I've said it before. I'll say it again.

Delta Green, after opening my eyes to Delta Green as a game module, I have become such a fan. I've bought many APs of my own and I run it for friends, not Impossible Landscapes. But yeah, and getting to play Vicky Ricci is like one of my favorite characters in a game on the glass cannon that I play any game. Couldn't agree more. Definitely Delta Green. Yeah, I know. Joe O'Brien weighs in. I love Delta Green.

In that same vein, I have yet to play the Yellow King RPG. Very curious coming from Delta Green and how much I've enjoyed it, how much I really liked Modern cthulhu we played that at uh where'd we play that gen con yeah gen con god that was a blast um yeah i guess i would just want to play more of games that i've only dipped my toe into like modern call of cthulhu blades in the dark when i got to join the busted mufflers that was really fun um and games i want to play more uh Morkborg, another one that we played. Man, Morkborg is so much fun. I would love to play that again, maybe even run that. That would just be a blast.

But yeah, that's all I can think of off the top of my head. Good choices, good choices. I am such a system junkie, Jack. It's very bad to ask me this. I'm not much of a critic. I just – I love – like I find the good in all RPG systems. Like I just – because you can really pull amazing stuff out of just about any system. And there's very few systems that all in all and wholly put together are perfect in every way.

But if you take out some – what works really great with them, I mean, that's what you see in a lot of game design is like people kind of cherry picking what works really well in one, adding it into another and making their own kind of hodgepodge system out of it. I would say Blades in the Dark is probably my favorite that I was exposed to that I didn't know about ahead of time in terms of a system. I love that system. And I, I mean, I know that again, it was not, uh, inventing the wheel, but the way that it works

and interacts with your, uh, with your crew and the way that you, you do heat and the way you do flashbacks and all that kind of stuff. I just, I love, love, love blades in the dark. I think it's, I think it's phenomenal. Um, And what do I want to play? There really isn't much I can think of that I want to play that I haven't already. I kind of have to get like, oh, oh, there's a new one that was kickstarted that I really want to try out from the makers. Oh, I want to look this up. It looks like I'm going to love love it and it's just because of the art and like the basic like um what they have put out there as their mission statement almost for the rpg uh it's from the it's called like legends legends in the mist that's it legend legend in the mist so go check

out legend in the mist uh their kickstarter is crushing it it's in the Mist. So go check out Legend in the Mist. Their Kickstarter is crushing it. It's in the middle of crushing it. That is the system I really want to try out. It's from the people that made City of Mist. I never got a chance to play it, but I got it. I almost ran it for New Game Who Dis. So I read up on it a little bit. Legend in the Mist looks like the kind of classic fantasy that I like with mechanics that are very story forward.

with mechanics that are very story forward and are really good at developing character, like forcing character development on you through dice rolls. I think, I think. So this is the vibe that I'm getting. It looks pretty amazing. Legend in the Mist is something I'm looking forward to. So keep an eye out for that.

It's really cool. Doesn't it? Yeah. Doesn't it look so cool? I would play this with you. Right. You know what I forgot though joe you gave me um you gave me pen dragon and i oh yeah i've yet to dive into that and i really really

want to try that out that just reminded me i'm speaking of game ttrpg junkie i have so many things that i've like collected and people have given me and i haven't had the chance to play or run them so that's that's definitely on my list too. Awesome. Awesome. That's such a good one. That's a really good answer that I didn't think of. It's like I so am looking forward to playing Pendragon again. Like I think there might be some Pendragon in our future. Stay tuned.

I will let you know if we get it going. But, man, it's just a game that benefits from kind of campaign play. And I hope that we can get into a longer Pendragon at some point. But, Sydney, I've kept you long enough. Thank you so much for filling in for Troy. It has been a pleasure hanging out with you and I'm glad that you've offered to do this every single week. I have no life.

So this is what I do. This was a blast. Thank you for having me. I'm always happy to jump on and also especially when the We Are Stupids involve Asta, I love to be here in the moment to defend yourself. No, to be corrected and humbly bow before Professor Eric. Thank you. stream. Cindy and I, Paula Deming and Mary Lou, streaming at 12 noon Eastern on February 21st. If you missed it, go back and check out the DVD,

the VOD. We have Class Canada podcasts tomorrow night and more stuff coming down the line soon. Follow on socials. Thanks, everybody. Take it easy. Have a good one and we'll see you next time. Bye. It's time to make your membership official. Become an official

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