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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   1933 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for July 24, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I posted the original in last Sunday’s small question thread, but posting my reply here.

Thanks you to @Thoroughlygruntled, @yofuckreddit, @MathWizard, @Hieronymus, @charlesf, @erwgv3g34, @Vollerei, @KingOfTheBailey, @orthoxerox, @Rex, @TowardsPanna, @chooky, @WhiningCoil, @ulyssessword, @birb_cromble, @aqouta, and @ToaKraka for the computer game recommendations. Before this post, I was already playing Skyrim and Baldur’s Gate III. I also bought The Long Dark.

I have a lot of work to do if I’m going to get through these. I’ll keep you all up to date. As @yofuckreddit said, it would be best if I was unemployed for a whole year so I could play them.

Does the combat in BG3 ever become less of a chore?

Warlockracy (whose channel I've been binge-watching) has come up with the theory of bimodal difficulty of combat encounters. He classifies them into three tiers:

  • trash fights, requiring no real effort to win
  • "captcha" fights, just hard enough to make you pay attention
  • challenge fights, that require you to come up with an ad-hoc solution

The theory is that "captcha" fights are bad, and you mostly need a combination of trash and challenge fights in your game. Weak encounters make you feel powerful and reinforce the theme of the dungeon. Strong encounters force you to master the combat system. But medium-strength encounters should exist only as an onramp to the next challenge fight, teaching you the new mechanic. Yes, players can complain about too many trash fights, but turning half of them into captcha fights will make the game worse off.

It sounds like BG3 has too many captcha fights.

Bit of a hijack, but the theory sounds intriguing to me as someone who only has D&D experience from behind the DM screen. To any players here, is this something you actually feel during tabletop play? (Emphasis on tabletop)

I run a beer-and-pretzels game for friends, and have felt increasingly compelled to juice up encounters from the books as they happen, so they are more engaging for a party of munchkins power players who are less interested in the RP aspect of the game (thankfully so; I'm not good at roleplay) and are mostly here to kill shit and commit heroic atrocities, with a martial-heavy party fairly well-optimized for such.

Given that four of us, myself included, are big no-lifers enjoyers of Path of Exile I can definitely understand the appeal of trash fights; the "captcha fight" term would probably fit many of my adjusted encounters, since I try to take the murderhobos up at their game to keep it fun and engaging. My justification for juicing encounters is that by the books, many crumple too fast to five martials (most with long-range options); the players seem to actually like judiciously spending resources and having to strategize together around unexpected counters like walls of force or unlucky save-or-suck hits (they fondly remember and eagerly retell their moments of so doing); and trash fights IMO are less well-suited for tabletop where any combat still briefly grinds the game to a halt as we unpack minis, draw the arena, roll initiative and go one after the other.

Why not combine the approaches? Have trash enemies mixed up with a few serious ones. Lancer does that with Grunt-type mechs and Exalted has "extras".

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