RPGBOT.Podcast

Tyler loves wizards. We know this because he told us. Repeatedly. For ninety minutes. So naturally, we gave him an entire episode to explain why the best solution to every problem is a spellbook, an alarming number of prepared spells, and occasionally sucking magical energy out of your left shoe. Meanwhile, Ash builds a tiny invisible assassin, Randall discovers that wizardry can apparently involve throwing a greatsword at someone from several hundred feet away, and everyone learns the most important rule of Pathfinder spellcasting: Fireball is a tool, not a personality. Tyler disagrees.

SHOW NOTES

It is finally time for Tyler's Roman Empire: Wizards.

In Part 1 of our Pathfinder 2e Wizard build, we take the class from levels 1 through 10 and dig into what makes the PF2e Wizard different from its D&D 5e counterpart. Wizards are still the spellbook-carrying nerds we know and love, but their real power comes from choosing, preparing, and using the right spells rather than simply solving every encounter with Fireball.

We break down Arcane Bond, including the extremely important revelation that your bonded item can technically be your left shoe, then walk through the Arcane Theses and the different ways they reshape how a Wizard manages spells. Spell Blending offers big high-rank spell slots, Spell Substitution gives prepared casters some much-needed flexibility, Experimental Spell Shaping opens up spell modification options, and Improved Familiar Attunement lets you drain magical power from your adorable animal companion without technically hurting it. Probably.

Then we build three very different Wizards. Ash creates a sneaky Red Mantis spellcaster built around stealth, spying, invisibility, and framing innocent people for magical crimes. Randall embraces the School of Unified Magical Theory and somehow turns his scholarly Wizard into a man who hurls increasingly large weapons at enemies. Tyler goes full Rune Lord of Wrath because apparently simply playing a Wizard was not Wizard enough.

As the builds advance, the differences become even clearer. Ash gains tools like Split Slot and Shroud of the Mantis to become an increasingly slippery magical infiltrator. Randall discovers the ridiculous potential of Bond Conservation and starts chaining recovered spells together while continuing to throw weapons at people. Tyler adds persistent fire, bleeding, spell shaping, extra spell slots earned by waking up angry, and increasingly elaborate ways to make one enemy have the worst day imaginable.

By level 10, we have three Wizards who share a spell list and almost nothing else. We also discover that Ash is apparently building according to the defensive philosophy of being somewhere else when the damage happens, which leads to perhaps the purest Wizard philosophy of the episode: here for a good time, not a long time.

• Player Core 1 (affiliate link)

• Player Core 2 (affiliate link)

• Impossible Magic (affiliate link)

• Archives of Nethys

• Pathbuilder

• RPGBOT.Content

• Wizard Guide

• Wizard Ancestries and Heritages Guide

• Wizard Arcane Schools Guide

• Wizard Arcane Thesis Guide

• Wizard Feats Guide

• Remastered Arcane Spell List Guide

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• A Pathfinder 2e Wizard is defined primarily by their spells. What you learn, prepare, and cast matters far more than simply collecting class feats.
• PF2e Wizards are powerful, but they do not have the enormous caster-versus-martial power gap familiar to many D&D 5e players.
• Fireball is good. Fireball is not the answer to every question. Tyler remains emotionally unconvinced.
• Arcane Bond effectively gives you another use of a prepared spell, and your bonded item can be almost anything you own, including, unfortunately, a shoe.
• Arcane Thesis dramatically changes how your Wizard handles spellcasting. Spell Substitution is especially forgiving if you are new to prepared spellcasting, while Spell Blending can be extremely powerful but more complicated.
• Arcane Schools provide curriculum spells, additional curriculum spell slots, and focus spells, while the School of Unified Magical Theory trades the curriculum for much greater flexibility with Drain Bonded Item.
• Wizard class feats can sometimes feel underwhelming because so much of the class's power budget lives in its spells, making Wizard an appealing class for archetype options.
• Ash proves that Wizards can make surprisingly effective stealth and infiltration characters.
• Randall proves that being a Wizard does not technically prevent you from solving problems by throwing a greatsword at them.
• Tyler proves that Rune Lord Wrath can turn waking up angry into an actual character resource.
• By level 10, the three builds demonstrate just how differently Wizards can play despite all starting from the same enormous Arcane spell list.
• Most importantly, Tyler loves Wizards. We know, buddy. We know.

Welcome to the RPGBOT Podcast. If you love Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, and tabletop RPGs, this is the podcast for you.

Support the show for free: Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any podcast app. It helps new listeners find the best RPG podcast for D&D and Pathfinder players.

Level up your experience: Join us on Patreon to unlock ad-free access to RPGBOT.net and the RPGBOT Podcast, chat with us and the community on the RPGBOT Discord, and jump into live-streamed RPG podcast recordings.

Support while you shop: Use our Amazon affiliate link at https://amzn.to/3NwElxQ and help us keep building tools and guides for the RPG community.

• Tyler Kamstra – Master of mechanics, seeing the Pathfinder action economy like Neo in the Matrix.

• Randall James – Lore buff and technologist, always ready to debate which Lord of the Rings edition reigns supreme.

• Ash Ely – Resident cynic, chaos agent, and AI's worst nightmare, bringing pure table-flipping RPG podcast energy.

Join the RPGBOT team where fantasy roleplaying meets real strategy, sarcasm, and community chaos.

How to Find Us:

In-depth articles, guides, handbooks, reviews, news on Tabletop Role Playing at RPGBOT.net

• BlueSky: @rpgbot.net
• TikTok: @RPGBOTDOTNET

• Professional Game Master on StartPlaying.Games
• BlueSky: @GravenAshes
• YouTube: @ashravenmedia
• https://ashelydm.com/
• https://ashelydm.com/

• BlueSky: @GrimoireRPG
• Amateurjack.com
• Read Melancon: A Grimoire Tale (affiliate link)

• @Lzr_illuminati

Nature is healing. Unfortunately, nature has chosen violence. We're taking the Druid from level 5 all the way to 20, which means summoning packs of velociraptors, turning into dinosaurs, raising fungal zombies, weaponizing potted plants, becoming an angry celestial nature wizard, and eventually gaining the power to erase armies with natural disasters. But none of that matters because we discovered the true pinnacle of Druid magic: summoning cows sixty feet above our enemies and letting gravity finish the spell. Welcome to high-level Druid optimization, where Mother Nature loves you, but she has absolutely had enough of your crap.

We return to our 2014 D&D 5e Druid builds and take Tyler's Circle of Spores, Randall's Circle of the Moon, and Ash's Circle of Stars from level 5 all the way to 20.

Third-level spells immediately send us down the Conjure Animals rabbit hole, where velociraptors look terrifying until someone suggests cows. From there, the entirely reasonable discussion of battlefield control becomes the Twister Gambit: summon livestock above your enemy and allow physics to contribute to the encounter.

As the levels climb, the Druids only become more ridiculous. Randall gets increasingly dangerous Wild Shape options and eventually Elemental Wild Shape. Tyler builds an expanding fungal entourage while becoming increasingly difficult to kill. Meanwhile, Rain Shadow graduates from peaceful celestial hippie to terrifying flying star mage with an alarming willingness to unleash the wrath of nature.

We dig through the Druid spell list, separating great options from traps, discussing Polymorph, Wall of Fire, summoning, battlefield control, Draconic Transformation, Foresight, Shapechange, and the point where spells like Earthquake and Tsunami stop feeling like combat abilities and start feeling like natural-disaster plot devices.

By level 18, Beast Spells lets Druids cast while Wild Shaped, and level 20's Archdruid removes the practical limit on Wild Shape altogether. The result is a class that starts by talking to squirrels and ends as a nearly unkillable force of nature capable of turning into monsters, casting world-altering magic, and presumably still dropping cows on people whenever the situation demands it.

• Conjure Animals remains enormously powerful, especially when quantity, Pack Tactics, battlefield control, and questionable applications of gravity get involved.
• The Twister Gambit proves that cows are not merely livestock. They are ammunition.
• Druids excel at battlefield control, with spells like Plant Growth capable of making movement extremely difficult under the right circumstances.
• Circle of the Moon keeps improving its Wild Shape options, eventually gaining Elemental Wild Shape and much stronger beast forms.
• Circle of Spores develops into a durable melee caster surrounded by fungal undead and eventually gains excellent defensive abilities.
• Circle of Stars becomes increasingly flexible as its Starry Forms improve, allowing Ash's Rain Shadow to become the terrifying celestial nature prophet she was always destined to be.
• Higher-level Druid magic increasingly shifts from winning encounters to reshaping entire situations with spells like Earthquake and Tsunami.
• Beast Spells dramatically changes Wild Shape by allowing Druids to cast while transformed.
• Foresight and Shapechange provide outstanding ninth-level options and make already-powerful Druids even harder to deal with.
• Archdruid's unlimited Wild Shape makes the level 20 Druid extraordinarily difficult to kill, especially for Circle of the Moon.
• The Druid's greatest strength is versatility. It can summon, heal, control the battlefield, transform, deal damage, support allies, infiltrate, and eventually become a walking ecological catastrophe.

Welcome to the RPGBOT Podcast. If you love Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, and tabletop RPGs, this is the podcast for you.

Support the show for free: Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any podcast app. It helps new listeners find the best RPG podcast for D&D and Pathfinder players.

Level up your experience: Join us on Patreon to unlock ad-free access to RPGBOT.net and the RPGBOT Podcast, chat with us and the community on the RPGBOT Discord, and jump into live-streamed RPG podcast recordings.

Support while you shop: Use our Amazon affiliate link at https://amzn.to/3NwElxQ and help us keep building tools and guides for the RPG community.

• Tyler Kamstra – Master of mechanics, seeing the Pathfinder action economy like Neo in the Matrix.

• Randall James – Lore buff and technologist, always ready to debate which Lord of the Rings edition reigns supreme.

• Ash Ely – Resident cynic, chaos agent, and AI's worst nightmare, bringing pure table-flipping RPG podcast energy.

Join the RPGBOT team where fantasy roleplaying meets real strategy, sarcasm, and community chaos.

How to Find Us:

In-depth articles, guides, handbooks, reviews, news on Tabletop Role Playing at RPGBOT.net

• BlueSky: @rpgbot.net
• TikTok: @RPGBOTDOTNET

• Professional Game Master on StartPlaying.Games
• BlueSky: @GravenAshes
• YouTube: @ashravenmedia
• https://ashelydm.com/
• https://ashelydm.com/

• BlueSky: @GrimoireRPG
• Amateurjack.com
• Read Melancon: A Grimoire Tale (affiliate link)

• @Lzr_illuminati

Last time on Impossible Magic, we discovered that the Magus can finally move, the Summoner can finally summon, and Pathfinder's three-action economy is apparently more of a polite recommendation. Now we're back for Part 2, where Paizo hands Ash an infinite supply of disposable corpses, gives Tyler a class built entirely around weaponized graffiti, drops roughly six hundred spells on his to-do list, and introduces magic so impossible that you're legally allowed to cast it exactly once. Welcome back. Somehow, things have gotten worse for the GM.

We survived Part 1, so naturally it's time to make things significantly more complicated.

We start with the Necromancer, Ash's immediate new obsession and perhaps Pathfinder's most enthusiastic endorsement of reusable corpses. Necromancers summon disposable thralls, sacrifice them to power Grave Spells, choose between the martial Reaper and thrall-heavy Puppeteer Fatal Methods, and customize their undead aesthetic through Blood, Bone, Flesh, or Spirit Grim Fascinations. Blood immediately attracts Ash's attention because apparently the correct amount of bleeding is all of it.

The class also gets Mastery of Life and Death, allowing it to play surprisingly flexible games with vitality and void damage. Between healing from dead thralls, creating seas of grasping limbs, exploding minions, summoning enormous undead monstrosities, and eventually dropping a living graveyard onto the battlefield, the Necromancer delivers exactly the sort of wholesome family entertainment we expected.

Then we meet the Runesmith, Pathfinder's newest experiment in making someone at the table track even more things. Runesmiths etch persistent runes onto equipment, trace temporary runes onto creatures, modify them with diacritic runes, and invoke them for additional effects. The result is a flexible new magic system with tons of room for clever combinations, action compression, buffs, debuffs, and the inevitable player who arrives with a spreadsheet explaining why drawing twelve symbols on the barbarian causes reality to explode. Or, as Tyler puts it, weaponized graffiti.

From there, we explore the new Wizard schools, including enchantment-adjacent magic, divination, dimensional manipulation, and what can only reasonably be described as Minecraft Wizard. Automatons also get new options, including more durability and, most importantly, laser eyes.

Then we arrive at approximately six hundred new and updated spells, which Tyler receives with the calm enthusiasm of a man watching years disappear from his life. Standouts include Bone Shield, Murder of Crows, Bone Moth's Kiss, Heartbolt, Living Thunderbolt, and the deeply important Fishing Spot, which creates an extraplanar fishing hole because sometimes saving the world can wait until after you catch a Scholar Salmon.

Finally, we reach the actual Impossible Spells. These aren't conventional character options so much as campaign-level magical plot devices. They can set enormous areas on fire, erase entire periods of history, leave permanent supernatural consequences, and can generally be cast only once by a character. So despite the book's title, Impossible Magic is apparently possible. Once.

We wrap up with strange rituals, spell catalysts, armor and weapon runes, grimoires, spellhearts, staves, magic tattoos, and enough other magical equipment to keep optimizers occupied until Paizo releases another book and starts the process all over again.

The final verdict is overwhelmingly positive. The Necromancer is flavorful and mechanically exciting, the Runesmith introduces a genuinely different approach to magic, the spells are unusually creative, and even the archetypes and magic items feel packed with ideas worth playing.

• Necromancer is built around disposable thralls that can attack, block space, fuel Grave Spells, and be sacrificed for increasingly ridiculous effects.
• Reaper supports a more martial Necromancer while Puppeteer leans harder into controlling and sacrificing thralls.
• Blood, Bone, Flesh, and Spirit Grim Fascinations dramatically change the flavor and utility of your thralls.
• Blood looks especially strong, including ways to bypass bleed immunity and regain HP when thralls die.
• Mastery of Life and Death gives Necromancers unusual flexibility with vitality and void effects.
• Runesmith introduces an entirely new magical playstyle built around etching, tracing, modifying, and invoking runes.
• Diacritic runes modify other runes, opening the door to increasingly elaborate combinations.
• Runesmith has enormous potential for optimization, especially as players discover new ways to exploit its action compression.
• The new Wizard schools offer some much-needed alternatives, including dimensional and terrain-manipulation themes.
• Automatons get additional defensive options and, critically, laser eyes.
• Impossible Magic includes roughly six hundred new and updated spells, ranging from genuinely useful combat magic to wonderfully bizarre options like Fishing Spot.
• Bone Moth's Kiss begins with a cute little moth and ends with your bones gradually becoming a medical emergency.
• Living Thunderbolt lets you become lightning, fly through creatures, and damage them as you pass through their spaces.
• Impossible Spells are primarily GM-controlled plot devices rather than normal spell selections.
• A character can generally use Impossible Magic only once, after which their soul is permanently marked against doing it again.
• The book also includes new rituals, grimoires, spellhearts, staves, catalysts, armor and weapon runes, tattoos, and other magical equipment.
• The overall reaction is extremely positive. Necromancer gets most of the immediate hype, but Runesmith may be the sleeper hit once players start discovering what the rune system can really do.

Welcome to the RPGBOT Podcast. If you love Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, and tabletop RPGs, this is the podcast for you.

Support the show for free: Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any podcast app. It helps new listeners find the best RPG podcast for D&D and Pathfinder players.

Level up your experience: Join us on Patreon to unlock ad-free access to RPGBOT.net and the RPGBOT Podcast, chat with us and the community on the RPGBOT Discord, and jump into live-streamed RPG podcast recordings.

Support while you shop: Use our Amazon affiliate link at https://amzn.to/3NwElxQ and help us keep building tools and guides for the RPG community.

• Tyler Kamstra – Master of mechanics, seeing the Pathfinder action economy like Neo in the Matrix.

• Randall James – Lore buff and technologist, always ready to debate which Lord of the Rings edition reigns supreme.

• Ash Ely – Resident cynic, chaos agent, and AI's worst nightmare, bringing pure table-flipping RPG podcast energy.

Join the RPGBOT team where fantasy roleplaying meets real strategy, sarcasm, and community chaos.

How to Find Us:

In-depth articles, guides, handbooks, reviews, news on Tabletop Role Playing at RPGBOT.net

• BlueSky: @rpgbot.net
• TikTok: @RPGBOTDOTNET

• Professional Game Master on StartPlaying.Games
• BlueSky: @GravenAshes
• YouTube: @ashravenmedia
• https://ashelydm.com/
• https://ashelydm.com/

• BlueSky: @GrimoireRPG
• Amateurjack.com
• Read Melancon: A Grimoire Tale (affiliate link)

• @Lzr_illuminati

Impossible Magic promises to break the boundaries of spellcasting, which apparently means letting the Magus move, allowing the Summoner to actually summon things, and giving Ash even more ways to kill player characters. We've got lightning-powered sword dashes, six-action summon turns, weapons made out of your own soul, teleporting rogues, and an archetype that looks at another caster's spell and says, "Actually, I'm in charge of this now." Paizo may have called the book Impossible Magic, but after reading some of these archetypes, the only impossible thing is pretending Pathfinder still has a three-action economy.

Impossible Magic is here, and Pathfinder 2e's magic users are getting some long-overdue attention. We start with the returning Magus and Summoner, two classes that had great concepts but spent years fighting their own mechanics almost as often as they fought monsters.

The Magus gets one of the biggest glow-ups. More spell slots and dramatically improved action economy mean Spellstrike finally feels like the centerpiece of the class instead of an elaborate three-action hostage situation. New options like Running Recharge, Sprinting Spellstrike, Twofold Twine, and the gun-toting Volatile Spark make the class more mobile, flexible, and gloriously anime.

Then we tackle the Summoner, which has accomplished the revolutionary feat of becoming good at summoning. Expanded spellcasting means you can actually spend spell slots on summons without feeling like you just burned half your daily resources. Combined with Act Together, an Eidolon, and summoned creatures, the class can start doing deeply irresponsible things with the action economy. Just remember: summon creatures for useful abilities, not just attacks. Unicorn healthcare is apparently the future.

We finish by digging into Impossible Magic's archetypes. Captivator weaponizes being ridiculously charming, Hedge Mage becomes the master of an absurd number of little spells, Living Nexus eats magic and turns it into violence, and Soulforger gives you a magical weapon powered by your convictions and potentially your terrible life choices. Spell Shifter gets especially weird by manipulating spells already in play, while Veil Dancer offers teleportation, concealment, and stabbing people from gaps in reality. World Rouser rounds things out by turning the surrounding environment into a growing magical support zone.

And somehow, despite spending more than an hour on all of that, we still barely scratched the book.

• Magus is dramatically better thanks to more spell slots and major improvements to its action economy.
• Running Recharge looks like an extremely strong Magus option because it combines movement with recharging Spellstrike.
• New Magus options lean heavily into the class fantasy, including dual weapons, firearms, area Spellstrikes, and extremely anime movement abilities.
• Summoner finally has enough spellcasting to actually summon creatures without sacrificing most of its daily resources.
• Act Together combined with an Eidolon and summoned creatures can produce some spectacular action-economy nonsense.
• Utility summons may outperform creatures chosen purely for damage. Healing, spellcasting, and special abilities are where summoning really shines.
• Hedge Mage is built around mastering low-rank magic, cantrips, and heightened spells rather than gaining a traditional collection of high-rank spells.
• Soulforger is extremely flavorful and potentially powerful, but brings enough rules and subsystems that it practically deserves its own episode.
• Spell Shifter can manipulate ongoing magic by sustaining, redirecting, altering, or dismantling spells, making it one of the book's most unusual archetypes.
• Veil Dancer is essentially teleportation plus stealth plus stabbing, or as the episode puts it, a little bit of Misty Step: The Archetype.
• Impossible Magic appears very willing to bend Pathfinder 2e's sacred three-action economy in the name of making magic more fun.
• The overall verdict is strongly positive: there is a lot of mechanically interesting, flavorful material here, and there is far too much of it to cover in one episode.

Welcome to the RPGBOT Podcast. If you love Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, and tabletop RPGs, this is the podcast for you.

Support the show for free: Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any podcast app. It helps new listeners find the best RPG podcast for D&D and Pathfinder players.

Level up your experience: Join us on Patreon to unlock ad-free access to RPGBOT.net and the RPGBOT Podcast, chat with us and the community on the RPGBOT Discord, and jump into live-streamed RPG podcast recordings.

Support while you shop: Use our Amazon affiliate link at https://amzn.to/3NwElxQ and help us keep building tools and guides for the RPG community.

• Tyler Kamstra – Master of mechanics, seeing the Pathfinder action economy like Neo in the Matrix.

• Randall James – Lore buff and technologist, always ready to debate which Lord of the Rings edition reigns supreme.

• Ash Ely – Resident cynic, chaos agent, and AI's worst nightmare, bringing pure table-flipping RPG podcast energy.

Join the RPGBOT team where fantasy roleplaying meets real strategy, sarcasm, and community chaos.

How to Find Us:

In-depth articles, guides, handbooks, reviews, news on Tabletop Role Playing at RPGBOT.net

• BlueSky: @rpgbot.net
• TikTok: @RPGBOTDOTNET

• Professional Game Master on StartPlaying.Games
• BlueSky: @GravenAshes
• YouTube: @ashravenmedia
• https://ashelydm.com/
• https://ashelydm.com/

• BlueSky: @GrimoireRPG
• Amateurjack.com
• Read Melancon: A Grimoire Tale (affiliate link)

• @Lzr_illuminati

Druids are what happens when a wizard looks at civilization and decides indoor plumbing was a mistake. You get questionable armor, inexplicable scimitar proficiency, the ability to become a bear, and a secret language apparently reserved for people who think Elvish is too mainstream. This week we build three dirt wizards, including an emo mushroom warrior, a cosmic hippie named Rain Shadow, and a Moon Druid who discovers that inside him there are apparently two wolves per short rest. Nature is healing. Unfortunately, it has also prepared Spike Growth.

We're digging into the 2014 DnD 5e Druid from levels 1 through 4, starting with ability scores, weapons, armor, spellcasting, and the ancient mystery of why Druids can wield metal scimitars but get weird about metal armor. We also confront Druidic, the secret language nobody asked for, before getting into the real reason most people showed up: Wild Shape.

At level 2, we break down the Druid Circles and discover that not all hippies are created equal. Tyler embraces complexity with Circle of Spores and begins his transformation into an angry mushroom with a stick. Ash creates Rain Shadow, a Circle of Stars Druid fueled by cosmic energy, Guiding Bolt, and an aura that desperately needs balancing. Randall chooses Circle of the Moon because sometimes optimization means turning into a bear and eating the problem.

By levels 3 and 4, second-level spells bring control options like Spike Growth, summoning gets increasingly useful, and the builds start finding their identities. We talk feats, Wild Shape tactics, concentration, battlefield control, and why a group of Druids working together might actually be more frightening than whatever encounter the DM prepared.

• Wisdom comes first, with Dexterity and Constitution doing important work keeping your poorly armored nature wizard alive.
• Druidic is basically Thieves' Cant for people who compost, and the episode's theory that it is Elvish for hipsters remains disturbingly plausible.
• Wild Shape varies enormously by subclass. Moon Druids turn it into a major combat tool, while other Druids often have better uses for those resources.
• Circle of Stars is exceptionally versatile, offering damage, healing, and better concentration through its Starry Forms.
• Circle of Spores can be powerful but complicated, rewarding careful building while offering plenty of opportunities to accidentally build an underperforming mushroom.
• Circle of the Moon is the straightforward animal violence option, especially at low levels when Wild Shape provides a ridiculous pile of extra hit points.
• Spike Growth is fantastic battlefield control, particularly when combined with summoned creatures, mobile Wild Shapes, and party members waiting to maul anything that escapes.
• At level 4, the builds take shape: Tyler goes Spores, Ash goes Stars, and Randall goes Moon, proving there are at least three completely different ways to weaponize a hike through the woods.

After five episodes of Cyberpunk RED, we have finally reached the most dangerous part of Night City: giving each other constructive feedback. Randall begins with I mechanically didn't like this game, Tyler discovers he spent all his money on software that was permanently deleted, and Ash admits the five-page cheat sheet has ceased to meet any reasonable definition of cheat sheet. But somewhere between the action-economy arguments, cyberpsychosis, crushing rent payments, and the revelation that Tyler still wants to be a wizard even in a game without wizards, we arrive at an important conclusion: the vibes are immaculate, the rules are complicated, and apparently the real Cyberpunk experience is deciding whether to pay rent or install cooler robot parts.

We close out our Cyberpunk RED Quickstart with a full debrief of the system, the actual play, what worked, what didn't, and what we probably would have done differently if we had more time in Night City.

Randall opens strong by saying he mechanically didn't like the game, but that position gets considerably more complicated as the discussion continues. The D10 itself wasn't the problem. In fact, the group generally liked the smaller die combined with large skill modifiers. When your character is good at something, they are really good at it, and that makes each role feel distinct. Combat also delivered the quick, dangerous feeling they expected, with armor degrading, damage piling up, and one bad decision potentially turning into a very short career.

The biggest mechanical discussion is Netrunning. Everyone agrees that it is cool, but it creates an unusual action-economy problem. Dave could take three Net Actions plus a meat-space action while Marky might spend his entire turn doing something like hitting a guy with a chainsaw. That can make the Netrunner feel like they are playing an entire second game while everyone else waits for their turn.

At the same time, the actual damage and effectiveness didn't necessarily feel unbalanced. Marky often accomplished more with his one physical action than Dave did with several Net Actions. The bigger issue was spotlight and pacing. The group thinks Netrunning would probably feel better when paired with simultaneous social challenges, physical objectives, security problems, and other jobs for the rest of the party instead of simply running two parallel combats.

That leads into one of the biggest lessons from the actual play. Cyberpunk RED may work much better with a larger crew. A four-person team could have a Rockerboy distracting someone, a Solo handling security, a Tech solving a physical problem, and a Netrunner diving into the architecture at the same time. With only Marky and Dave, there were fewer opportunities to demonstrate that kind of coordinated job.

They also acknowledge that years of D&D and Pathfinder trained everyone to solve problems by eventually rolling initiative. Cyberpunk seems to reward a different mindset. Talk first, manipulate the situation, use contacts, exploit skills, plan the job, and only start shooting when the plan inevitably catches fire.

The skill system gets mixed reactions. The large modifiers make specialization feel meaningful, but there are a lot of skills, some of which feel extremely specific. Add difficulty values, environmental penalties, equipment penalties, conditions, combat rules, armor, range bands, critical injuries, and everything else, and Ash notes that the cheat sheet alone is five pages long. At that point, it is no longer a cheat sheet. It is another book.

Cyberware is one of the systems everyone wishes they had more time to explore. Buying upgrades, improving your body, choosing programs, and slowly building a character over multiple jobs sounds like one of Cyberpunk RED's biggest rewards. The problem is that every improvement comes with pressure from Humanity and Empathy. The better the chrome gets, the more carefully you need to consider how much of yourself you are willing to sacrifice.

That tension becomes even more interesting in a longer campaign. Cyberpunk RED has rent, lifestyle expenses, unexpected bills, jobs, downtime, gear upgrades, cyberware, and the constant temptation to spend tomorrow's survival money on something that might help you survive tonight. Do you pay rent, or buy the implant that might make the next job successful enough to solve the rent problem later?

As Randall points out, that sounds suspiciously like real life.

Ash clarifies that the fantasy is that sometimes you actually get to win.

The group increasingly comes around to the idea that Cyberpunk RED is less a combat simulator and more a Night City life simulator. A long campaign built around episodic jobs, rival crews, personal contacts, planning between sessions, upgrading equipment, and roleplaying downtime could bring out parts of the system that a short Quickstart simply cannot.

Randall especially likes the idea of extending that experience beyond game night. A campaign Discord could become part of Night City, with characters hearing about jobs, talking to contacts, gathering clues, competing with rival crews, and planning a heist during the week before everyone sits down to execute it.

The conversation eventually moves from mechanics to the thing everyone seems to agree Cyberpunk absolutely nails: the world.

Randall loves the gig-economy structure and the importance of personal networks. In a world where institutions have largely failed you, the people you know matter. Your friends, family, contacts, crew, and community become the thing keeping you alive.

Ash takes that idea even further. Cyberpunk may look nihilistic from the outside, but the point isn't that nothing matters. The world is rigged, corporations control everything, society may never improve, and your story may end badly.

Your friends still matter.

Your community still matters.

The time you have with them still matters.

That, more than the chrome, guns, Black ICE, or chainsaw hands, becomes the group's real takeaway from Cyberpunk RED. The setting is bleak because caring about people in a world designed to grind them down makes those relationships matter even more.

And naturally, the episode ends with chat comparing Cyberpunk and Shadowrun, Ash being accused of practicing trickle-down hero-point economics, and Tyler floating Shadowrun as a future Quickstart.

Because apparently five episodes of dystopian corporate misery were not enough.

• The vibes are immaculate. Even when the group disagreed with individual mechanics, everyone responded positively to Night City, the lore, cyberware, jobs, and overall Cyberpunk atmosphere.
• The D10 system worked better than expected. Large modifiers mean characters feel genuinely specialized, while the smaller die keeps results uncertain without making experts suddenly incompetent.
• Combat feels dangerous. Armor degradation and substantial damage support the fast, dirty, lethal tone the group expected from Cyberpunk RED.
• Netrunning is cool but creates spotlight problems. Three Net Actions plus a meat action can make the Netrunner appear to be playing considerably more game than everyone else.
• The action economy may be less unbalanced than it looks. Marky often accomplished more physical damage with one action than Dave accomplished with several Net Actions. The real issue was how much table time each character received.
• Netrunning probably works best as part of a larger encounter. Mixing hacking with social manipulation, physical objectives, security challenges, and combat would give the rest of the crew meaningful things to accomplish at the same time.
• A larger party might showcase the system better. Four characters with different roles could divide responsibilities during a job and make specialization feel more rewarding.
• D&D habits do not always translate. The group repeatedly drifted toward combat because that is how they are accustomed to solving encounters. Cyberpunk RED appears to reward planning, social interaction, contacts, infiltration, and avoiding unnecessary fights.
• There are a lot of rules to track. Skills, modifiers, range DVs, armor, conditions, cyberware, Netrunning, Humanity, and other subsystems create significant cognitive load, especially for a GM learning the game.
• Some skills feel overly specific. The huge skill list gives characters strong niches, but it can also make the system feel cluttered.
• Cyberware deserves a campaign, not a one-shot. Saving money, installing upgrades, changing your capabilities, and balancing improvements against Humanity looks like a major part of the long-term appeal.
• Humanity makes upgrades a meaningful choice. More chrome can make you more capable, but characters have limits, and traumatic experiences can create additional pressure.
• Downtime may be where Cyberpunk really shines. Rent, expenses, jobs, gear, cyberware, lifestyle choices, and trying to climb out of poverty reinforce the setting between missions.
• The game seems built for episodic campaigns. Take a job, prepare, execute it, survive the consequences, get paid, upgrade, pay your bills, and hope the next job goes better.
• A persistent roleplaying community could be fantastic. Contacts, rival crews, job offers, planning, and investigation could continue between sessions and make Night City feel alive.
• Community is one of the setting's strongest themes. When institutions cannot be trusted, your crew and the people you care about become your real support system.
• Cyberpunk is bleak without being completely nihilistic. The system may be rigged and the future may be awful, but relationships, loyalty, hope, and choosing what matters to you still have value.
• The Quickstart only showed part of the game. The group repeatedly stresses that they did not experience martial arts, car chases, much of the downtime system, long-term cyberware progression, or many other mechanics.
• Their opinion improved with familiarity. The second combat flowed better once everyone understood Netrunning and the basic mechanics, suggesting experience would smooth out some of the rough edges.
• The final verdict is complicated but positive. Cyberpunk RED has mechanics that frustrated them, but also enough depth, atmosphere, character specialization, campaign potential, and thematic weight that the group clearly sees why people love it.

And perhaps the most Cyberpunk RED lesson of all: you can lose your money, your apartment, your Humanity, several expensive programs, and possibly your limbs, but at least your friends will be there to watch it happen.

Welcome to the RPGBOT Podcast. If you love Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, and tabletop RPGs, this is the podcast for you.

Support the show for free: Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any podcast app. It helps new listeners find the best RPG podcast for D&D and Pathfinder players.

Level up your experience: Join us on Patreon to unlock ad-free access to RPGBOT.net and the RPGBOT Podcast, chat with us and the community on the RPGBOT Discord, and jump into live-streamed RPG podcast recordings.

Support while you shop: Use our Amazon affiliate link at https://amzn.to/3NwElxQ and help us keep building tools and guides for the RPG community.

• Tyler Kamstra – Master of mechanics, seeing the Pathfinder action economy like Neo in the Matrix.

• Randall James – Lore buff and technologist, always ready to debate which Lord of the Rings edition reigns supreme.

• Ash Ely – Resident cynic, chaos agent, and AI's worst nightmare, bringing pure table-flipping RPG podcast energy.

Join the RPGBOT team where fantasy roleplaying meets real strategy, sarcasm, and community chaos.

How to Find Us:

In-depth articles, guides, handbooks, reviews, news on Tabletop Role Playing at RPGBOT.net

• BlueSky: @rpgbot.net
• TikTok: @RPGBOTDOTNET

• Professional Game Master on StartPlaying.Games
• BlueSky: @GravenAshes
• YouTube: @ashravenmedia
• https://ashelydm.com/
• https://ashelydm.com/

• BlueSky: @GrimoireRPG
• Amateurjack.com
• Read Melancon: A Grimoire Tale (affiliate link)

• @Lzr_illuminati

The good news is we found J-ZK. The bad news is her skull is open, Dave is fighting a man inside the internet, Marky has replaced diplomacy with a hand chainsaw, and everyone involved is eventually on fire. Welcome to the Cyberpunk RED finale, where friendship conquers evil, violence solves several problems, and our heroes save the girl, kill the villain, jump out of a twentieth-floor window while playing guitar, and discover the most important rule of Night City: heroic acts are not reimbursable.

Marky Day and Dave Costanzo face off against Mr. Frommiter, better known as Gangster 3D, in the finale of our Cyberpunk RED actual play. Marky handles things in meat space with his hand chainsaw while Dave battles Frommiter inside the Net Architecture. Both sides unleash Black ICE, people catch fire, programs get deleted, and Marky continues rolling numbers that make everyone suspicious of his dice. Dave finally chases Frommiter through the network and kills him by hacking his life-support systems. He then pushes deeper to disconnect J-ZK while Marky handles the important physical tasks, including putting out Dave's flaming head.

With security closing in, Marky reveals that his escape plan has always involved parachutes. They smash a window, strap J-ZK to Marky, leave Hyperactive Hyena behind as a distraction, and BASE jump from the twentieth floor while Marky plays guitar. J-ZK is safe, Frommiter is dead, and Marky may finally have upgraded from backup romantic interest. Unfortunately, J-ZK missed her Sanru meeting, so nobody gets paid.

Welcome to Night City.

• Marky attacks Frommiter with a hand chainsaw while Dave fights him simultaneously in the Net.
• Black ICE turns the battle into a second combat happening inside the first one.
• Dave kills Frommiter by hacking his life-support systems.
• Dave successfully disconnects and rescues J-ZK.
• Hyperactive Hyena remains the team's extremely temporary murder-mascot ally.
• The crew escapes by parachuting from the twentieth floor while Marky plays guitar.
• J-ZK survives, but missing the Sanru presentation means the team earns nothing.
• Final accounting: save the client, kill the villain, lose money. Peak Cyberpunk.

Welcome to the RPGBOT Podcast. If you love Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, and tabletop RPGs, this is the podcast for you.

Support the show for free: Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any podcast app. It helps new listeners find the best RPG podcast for D&D and Pathfinder players.

Level up your experience: Join us on Patreon to unlock ad-free access to RPGBOT.net and the RPGBOT Podcast, chat with us and the community on the RPGBOT Discord, and jump into live-streamed RPG podcast recordings.

Support while you shop: Use our Amazon affiliate link at https://amzn.to/3NwElxQ and help us keep building tools and guides for the RPG community.

• Tyler Kamstra – Master of mechanics, seeing the Pathfinder action economy like Neo in the Matrix.

• Randall James – Lore buff and technologist, always ready to debate which Lord of the Rings edition reigns supreme.

• Ash Ely – Resident cynic, chaos agent, and AI's worst nightmare, bringing pure table-flipping RPG podcast energy.

Join the RPGBOT team where fantasy roleplaying meets real strategy, sarcasm, and community chaos.

How to Find Us:

In-depth articles, guides, handbooks, reviews, news on Tabletop Role Playing at RPGBOT.net

• BlueSky: @rpgbot.net
• TikTok: @RPGBOTDOTNET

• Professional Game Master on StartPlaying.Games
• BlueSky: @GravenAshes
• YouTube: @ashravenmedia
• https://ashelydm.com/
• https://ashelydm.com/

• BlueSky: @GrimoireRPG
• Amateurjack.com
• Read Melancon: A Grimoire Tale (affiliate link)

• @Lzr_illuminati

Welcome to Bytopia, the Upper Plane for people who looked at Heaven and said, "This is nice, but could we make everyone work a little harder?" The weather is lovely, the neighbors are aggressively helpful, the economy is apparently powered by ethical commerce, and there's another entire world hanging upside down over your head. Also, there are adamantine dragons, because apparently even paradise needs something capable of turning your adventuring party into a fine red mist. Pack a lunch, bring your climbing gear, and try not to become so content that you forget you were supposed to leave.

This week on the RPGBOT.Podcast, we head to Bytopia, D&D's plane of good neighbors, hard work, beautiful weather, and deeply questionable planetary physics.

Tyler, Randall, and Ash explore Bytopia's two facing layers, the people and creatures who live there, and what happens when an entire plane is infused with enough goodwill that visitors might simply decide everything is fine and never go home. We dig into travel between the layers, life and trade in Bytopia, intelligent plants, adamantine dragons, and the planar marketplace of Tradegate, where even the currency seems determined to make capitalism behave itself.

Along the way, we consider the strange implications of an afterlife built around productive happiness and tackle the question of the week: if you built an "oops all" party using ancestries outside the Player's Handbook, what glorious collection of weirdos would you bring to the table?

It's paradise. There's nice weather. Everyone is helpful. Naturally, we're suspicious.

• Bytopia is good, but not lazy: The plane emphasizes community, cooperation, work, and the satisfaction that comes from building something worthwhile.
• The geography is wonderfully ridiculous: Its two layers face each other, creating one of the strangest landscapes in the D&D multiverse.
• Being happy can apparently be a planar hazard: Bytopia's pervasive goodwill and contentment could make visitors surprisingly reluctant to leave.
• Tradegate takes ethical commerce seriously: Its unusual currency and trading rules reinforce Bytopia's broader themes of fairness and cooperation.
• The wildlife gets weird: Intelligent plants and adamantine dragons help ensure that "pleasant Upper Plane" does not mean "nothing interesting happens here."
• Bytopia has strong adventure potential: Its unusual physics, settlements, trade, inhabitants, and planar travel offer considerably more than a peaceful celestial vacation.
• Oops All Weirdos remains a valid party-building strategy: The episode's non-PHB ancestry discussion proves that sometimes the best adventuring party looks like everyone ignored the character creation instructions.

Welcome to the RPGBOT Podcast. If you love Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, and tabletop RPGs, this is the podcast for you.

Support the show for free: Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any podcast app. It helps new listeners find the best RPG podcast for D&D and Pathfinder players.

Level up your experience: Join us on Patreon to unlock ad-free access to RPGBOT.net and the RPGBOT Podcast, chat with us and the community on the RPGBOT Discord, and jump into live-streamed RPG podcast recordings.

Support while you shop: Use our Amazon affiliate link at https://amzn.to/3NwElxQ and help us keep building tools and guides for the RPG community.

• Tyler Kamstra – Master of mechanics, seeing the Pathfinder action economy like Neo in the Matrix.

• Randall James – Lore buff and technologist, always ready to debate which Lord of the Rings edition reigns supreme.

• Ash Ely – Resident cynic, chaos agent, and AI's worst nightmare, bringing pure table-flipping RPG podcast energy.

Join the RPGBOT team where fantasy roleplaying meets real strategy, sarcasm, and community chaos.

How to Find Us:

In-depth articles, guides, handbooks, reviews, news on Tabletop Role Playing at RPGBOT.net

• BlueSky: @rpgbot.net
• TikTok: @RPGBOTDOTNET

• Professional Game Master on StartPlaying.Games
• BlueSky: @GravenAshes
• YouTube: @ashravenmedia
• https://ashelydm.com/
• https://ashelydm.com/

• BlueSky: @GrimoireRPG
• Amateurjack.com
• Read Melancon: A Grimoire Tale (affiliate link)

• @Lzr_illuminati

Welcome back to Night City, where Tyler has acquired a another cat, Randall has acquired a bedazzled bulletproof vest, and Ash has apparently acquired the Cyberpunk equivalent of Five Nights at Freddy's. This week, Marky Day becomes Marky Knight and walks willingly into something everyone immediately identifies as a murder hallway. Dave gets set on fire by a computer, Marky discovers that cartoon mascots are weak against bullets, and together they spend every remaining resource to adopt a homicidal digital hyena. Somehow, all of this turns out to be the easy part, because at the end of the hallway is a cybernetic nightmare, their kidnapped employer, and a corporate executive offering them double their money to please stop asking questions. Welcome to Cyberpunk RED, chooms. Capitalism has a boss fight.

Marky Day and Dave Costanzo reach the twentieth floor of Discom and immediately discover that the cheerful corporate mascots are actually armed security drones. While Marky fights Buster Swine and Electric Bunny in meat space, Dave dives into the Net Architecture, battles a Hellhound, catches fire, and eventually hijacks Hyperactive Hyena to turn Discom's own security against itself.

After stabilizing a seriously wounded Marky, Dave pushes deeper into the network and uncovers evidence that Discom has been targeting local 3D artists. J-ZK's name has been crossed off the list with the ominous note that she is no longer an issue.

Behind the final door, they find J-ZK restrained and wired into machinery. Mr. Frommiter reveals that he is also Gangster 3D and admits that he kidnapped her after she refused to work for Discom. He offers Marky and Dave double their original payment to walk away.

Marky chooses violence.

• Marky battles Discom's armed mascot drones while Dave Netruns simultaneously.
• Dave survives a Hellhound attack, gets set on fire, and later loses his Sword program to an Asp.
• Marky is seriously wounded but stabilized with First Aid.
• Dave spends all his Luck to hijack Hyperactive Hyena and turn it against Discom.
• Discom has been pressuring and recruiting 3D artists across Night City.
• Mr. Frommiter and Gangster 3D are the same person.
• J-ZK has been kidnapped and forcibly connected to Discom's equipment.
• Frommiter offers the team double their pay to leave.
• The episode ends immediately before the boss fight.

Welcome to the RPGBOT Podcast. If you love Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, and tabletop RPGs, this is the podcast for you.

Support the show for free: Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any podcast app. It helps new listeners find the best RPG podcast for D&D and Pathfinder players.

Level up your experience: Join us on Patreon to unlock ad-free access to RPGBOT.net and the RPGBOT Podcast, chat with us and the community on the RPGBOT Discord, and jump into live-streamed RPG podcast recordings.

Support while you shop: Use our Amazon affiliate link at https://amzn.to/3NwElxQ and help us keep building tools and guides for the RPG community.

• Tyler Kamstra – Master of mechanics, seeing the Pathfinder action economy like Neo in the Matrix.

• Randall James – Lore buff and technologist, always ready to debate which Lord of the Rings edition reigns supreme.

• Ash Ely – Resident cynic, chaos agent, and AI's worst nightmare, bringing pure table-flipping RPG podcast energy.

Join the RPGBOT team where fantasy roleplaying meets real strategy, sarcasm, and community chaos.

How to Find Us:

In-depth articles, guides, handbooks, reviews, news on Tabletop Role Playing at RPGBOT.net

• BlueSky: @rpgbot.net
• TikTok: @RPGBOTDOTNET

• Professional Game Master on StartPlaying.Games
• BlueSky: @GravenAshes
• YouTube: @ashravenmedia
• https://ashelydm.com/
• https://ashelydm.com/

• BlueSky: @GrimoireRPG
• Amateurjack.com
• Read Melancon: A Grimoire Tale (affiliate link)

• @Lzr_illuminati

Welcome to Night City, where housing is a shipping container, breakfast is kibble, and your most reliable neighbor is a rat named Greg. This week, Marky Day and Dave Costanzo accept a perfectly normal freelance job involving stalking, blackmail, corporate espionage, breaking and entering, and possibly assault. Fortunately, Marky has love in his heart, a mandolin in his bag, and the negotiating instincts to voluntarily reduce their payment by half. Dave, meanwhile, is an elite Netrunner capable of defeating corporate security, provided nobody asks him to walk quietly across a lobby without falling directly onto his face.

Marky Day and Dave Costanzo officially enter Night City for their first Cyberpunk RED adventure, but not before Tyler reveals that peer pressure convinced him to contact Brennan Lee Mulligan and possibly recover DiceGoblin.com. Having exhausted all responsible business decisions, the group finally turns to crime.

Marky wakes in his increasingly hot storage container, works out, eats some kibble, and contemplates writing a song about how love could solve society's problems. He is a rockerboy, vigilante, and aggressively compassionate street philosopher who will never judge someone too harshly, though he may beat them up for their own personal growth.

Next door, Dave Costanzo lives among cables, computer equipment, and spilled kibble. His breakfast is quickly claimed by Greg, the local rat and apparently the most dependable member of the team.

Their morning changes when Marky receives a call from J-ZK, a colorful fashion designer and 3D weapons artist who helped support his music career. A rival artist calling himself Gangster 3D has been stalking her, threatening her, attempting to hack her agent, and using stolen private material to blackmail her. She believes he may also sabotage an important presentation to Sanroo.

J-ZK asks Marky and Dave to break into the Discom corporate building, find Gangster 3D's operation, and steal the incriminating information from his computer. She initially offers them 5,000 eddies, but Marky decides that is far too generous and successfully negotiates their pay down to 2,500 each. Somewhere in Night City, a fixer feels a sudden disturbance in the economy.

To get inside, Marky uses Charismatic Impact to locate one of his corporate fans at the Afterlife. John John may not work for Discom, but he works for Biotechnica and is willing to escort them to the building and vouch for them at security. Marky supports their cover story with a crumpled folder of sheet music masquerading as confidential briefing documents.

Once inside, the pair begins searching for a network access point. Marky moves through the lobby like a seasoned professional. Dave rolls a critical failure on stealth, falls directly onto the floor, and explains to the nearby security guard that his shoe came untied. This works because security in Night City has apparently seen much worse before lunch.

While Dave connects to the building's network, Marky provides cover by pretending to conduct an important corporate conversation. Dave bypasses a password, takes control of an employee-only door, and searches the network for information about Gangster 3D.

He discovers the appointment calendar of Mr. Fromider, an executive on the twentieth floor. Fromider has met with Gangster 3D five times in the past two weeks and has also been meeting with several minor local artists. The pattern suggests that Gangster 3D may be involved in poaching artists like J-ZK for some larger corporate scheme.

Marky and Dave slip into the private elevator, but Marky's incredible perception reveals a hidden sleep-gas system designed to incapacitate unauthorized passengers. Dave disables the device by cutting the correct wire, proving that he is significantly better at defeating electronic security than standing upright in public.

The elevator still requires authorization, forcing Dave to jack into the network again. This time he must pass a Wisp Black ICE program to reach the elevator controls. He activates his Armor program, races past the hostile software, and successfully takes control of the elevator.

The Wisp catches him before he can escape and attempts to damage his brain while reducing his available Net Actions. Dave's Armor absorbs the damage, allowing him to slide away from the pursuing program and safely jack out.

The episode ends as the elevator begins climbing toward the twentieth floor. Marky and Dave are officially inside, Mr. Fromider is waiting somewhere above them, and the part of the mission where everything becomes violent has probably just begun.

• The episode demonstrates how Cyberpunk RED combines social interaction, stealth, investigation, physical security, and Netrunning within the same mission.
• Marky's Charismatic Impact turns his fans into useful contacts. John John helps the team pass the building's first layer of security without violence.
• Marky and Dave complement each other well. Marky handles persuasion, distractions, and social situations, while Dave manages computers, access points, and electronic security.
• Critical successes and failures have immediate narrative effects. Marky repeatedly notices hidden dangers, while Dave's critical stealth failure nearly exposes the mission.
• Netrunners connect through physical access points and enter a layered Net Architecture containing passwords, files, control nodes, and Black ICE.
• Pathfinder allows a Netrunner to map parts of the architecture before moving deeper, reducing the risk of blindly encountering dangerous programs.
• Control nodes connect the digital and physical environments. Dave uses them to unlock an employee door and activate the private elevator.
• Disconnecting from a network resets most changes. A Netrunner must reach the bottom of the architecture and install a virus to create a lasting effect.
• Black ICE can attack a Netrunner directly, causing brain damage or interfering with their available Net Actions.
• Dave's Armor program completely absorbs the Wisp's damage, demonstrating the value of choosing and activating defensive programs before engaging hostile architecture.
• The team learns that Mr. Fromider has met repeatedly with Gangster 3D and several local artists, suggesting a broader scheme beyond J-ZK's personal blackmail problem.
• The adventure closes on a cliffhanger as Marky and Dave ascend toward the twentieth floor, having successfully completed the portion of the infiltration where nobody has shot them yet.

Welcome to the RPGBOT Podcast. If you love Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, and tabletop RPGs, this is the podcast for you.

Support the show for free: Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any podcast app. It helps new listeners find the best RPG podcast for D&D and Pathfinder players.

Level up your experience: Join us on Patreon to unlock ad-free access to RPGBOT.net and the RPGBOT Podcast, chat with us and the community on the RPGBOT Discord, and jump into live-streamed RPG podcast recordings.

Support while you shop: Use our Amazon affiliate link at https://amzn.to/3NwElxQ and help us keep building tools and guides for the RPG community.

• Tyler Kamstra – Master of mechanics, seeing the Pathfinder action economy like Neo in the Matrix.

• Randall James – Lore buff and technologist, always ready to debate which Lord of the Rings edition reigns supreme.

• Ash Ely – Resident cynic, chaos agent, and AI's worst nightmare, bringing pure table-flipping RPG podcast energy.

Join the RPGBOT team where fantasy roleplaying meets real strategy, sarcasm, and community chaos.

How to Find Us:

In-depth articles, guides, handbooks, reviews, news on Tabletop Role Playing at RPGBOT.net

• BlueSky: @rpgbot.net
• TikTok: @RPGBOTDOTNET

• Professional Game Master on StartPlaying.Games
• BlueSky: @GravenAshes
• YouTube: @ashravenmedia

• BlueSky: @GrimoireRPG
• Amateurjack.com
• Read Melancon: A Grimoire Tale (affiliate link)

• @Lzr_illuminati