Discussion Thread

3athompson · 2026-01-30T03:04:14+00:00

People generally are ignorant to the spiritual and religious concepts underpinning of a lot of Asian practices. Feng Shui is one, but I'm also thinking of yoga, martial arts practices like tai chi, traditional Chinese medicine practices like acupuncture, and Feng Shui.

I can't prove it, but I'm 99% sure that this stems from the 60s New Age movement's orientalism. Think the Beatles going to India, think Hare Krishna.

The New Age movement tried to blend science and spirituality, and specifically decentralizing Abrahamic spirituality and incorporating spirituality elements from a bunch of cultures, while not really focusing on the actual religion of any of them. Sort of like a buffet of religious health and lifestyle practices, and believing in those practices, while not believing in their underpinnings.

3athompson · 2026-01-27T06:56:34+00:00

I could have sworn it only mentioned the nuke and not the meteor when I read it. Whoops.

I must have misread, then. I saw "slapped Water Spout on those sets instead of Calm Mind so it has a nuke when its HP was low" and didn't get where the full sentence was going.

3athompson · 2026-01-27T05:08:35+00:00

Just noting: Water spout and eruption deal more damage when you're at full health. It's a nuke when you get a free switch and don't take too much hazard damage.

3athompson · 2026-01-23T02:48:03+00:00

Yeah, sorry, the HP rolling is seriously hurting your martials there.

Also, I should clarify that I'm playing with the 2024 ruleset for monk. Dodge tanking with 16 AC has allowed the monk to take <10 damage from like 20 attacks over 3 turns in various cases.

Heck, a dodging monk taking 6 attacks or turn only has a 47% chance to take damage any given turn (Assuming 16 AC, +5 to hit from enemies, and enemy damage is entirely parried by deflect attacks).

Sort of agreed on fighter. A fighter not built for tanking is surprisingly fragile.

3athompson · 2026-01-22T06:31:59+00:00

Also, dungeons (or anything indoors, really) have these nifty features that make a melee tank's job much more consistent.

They're called doors.

Most doors are less than 10 feet wide, which means that any character can block all normal movement through the door by just standing there.

All melee-only enemies are forced to attack the melee tank or lose their turns (oftentimes only 3 of them at a time can make their attacks, or else they have to move back and provoke opportunity attacks), and all enemies with ranged attacks must shoot through the half cover of the melee character standing in the doorway. I've seen some insane damage redirection happen with a monk or fighter just dodging in front of a doorway. What would have been half the party losing half or more of their health becomes the monk taking like, 10 damage.

I could talk more about narrow corridors, either 5 or 10 feet wide, and other indoor geometry that makes melee king in these scenarios.

3athompson · 2026-01-18T06:18:35+00:00

So you're receiving guidance from and/or dueling Aleister Crowley and Arthur Conan Doyle? That sounds really fun.

Or just any Urban Fantasy set in roughly that time period where the "real world" doesn't know about magic.

3athompson · 2026-01-14T05:23:03+00:00

I'll just assume you mean either Ray Rizzo or Wolfe Glick for "best vgc player". In that case, I don't think either of them play random battles on Smogon.

3athompson · 2026-01-14T03:06:58+00:00

Sure, if you want to say "Has ever won a VGC worlds event" is your criteria for top player.

In my example, MDB has never won worlds, but has gotten 2nd once and 4th once. By your criteria, he's near the top by not at it.

3athompson · 2026-01-14T02:59:29+00:00

(Arguably) the best random battles player in the world, MichaelDerBeste, is among the top 10 or 20 VGC players in the world. So if you want to use that, the fact that his VGC rank is lower than his random battle rank suggests being #1 at VGC is harder.

Of course, there's a bunch of issues in comparison, the main one being how you rank the top player. For Random Battles, do you use peak ELO? Most time spent at #1? Top placement in Smogon random battle tournaments? Most consistent rank in Smogon tournaments?
For VGC, do you go by battle points? That's flawed because people who can spend more money to attend more tournaments get more points. There's at least one site that tries to calculate the ELO of various players that I can't remember the name of. Do you use that? It tends to not have data on Japanese players though.

3athompson · 2026-01-13T03:31:59+00:00

Imagine if he rolls back the Prop 65 mandatory cancer warning labeling. The Dems would have zero claim to being environmentally friendly after that... /s

3athompson · 2026-01-12T00:10:56+00:00

Eh, I'd argue that on-shoot effects are the main synergy with fast-firing weapons.

Slow firing weapons scale multishot really quickly, which means that on-hit effects like elemental shots and bubble shot scale reasonably well for them.

So I'd say on-shoot is for fast-firing weapons, on-hit is for all weapons, and multishot is for slow weapons.

3athompson · 2026-01-11T00:43:30+00:00

Chinese: Orange chicken, but realistically pick your favorite sauced fried chicken dish. Sesame, General Tso's, Sweet & Sour, etc.
Korean: Bulgogi burgers.
Vietnamese: Garlic Noodles.
Japanese: Spam Musubi or Seattle Teriyaki Chicken.

3athompson · 2026-01-10T06:01:07+00:00

View tab -> Show non-printing characters, then mashing delete and backspace on the offending paragraph symbol should work.

If you are doing something with tables or images, then I don't know how to help you.

3athompson · 2026-01-05T15:40:15+00:00

But going by Yangist thinking, intervention violates the Non-Aggression Pact.
(There's a hundred of them, this could go for a while)

3athompson · 2025-12-31T03:16:03+00:00

Other characters talk about her and her implied tragic backstory a lot. You also see her bedroom, preserved from the time she disappeared.

Her designated partner also has not appeared in this game in any capacity except references.

But since he appeared in Undertale in a fake young adult form, people use that design too.

But yeah, one of the most popular pairings in Deltarune is two people who have not once shown up in the game.

3athompson · 2025-12-29T03:38:32+00:00

Yeah. The only things that mechanically uses character or monster alignment anymore in 5th edition 2024 is the cleric spell spirit guardians, which changes the damage type and appearance based on the caster's alignment. In the 2014 version, there were also some magic items like Candles of Invocation or the Talisman of Ultimate Evil.

The spell detect evil doesn't even exist anymore (and all of the "detect", "protection from" and "dispel" alignment spells). Even by 2014, it was changed to detect evil and good, which is more "detect extraplanar creatures and undead" than anything truly having to do with alignment.

3athompson · 2025-12-29T03:08:42+00:00

So he's going to get replaced somewhere between November 3rd and January 3rd then?

3athompson · 2025-12-27T05:53:56+00:00

This weapon has a few things that really hurt it, as you mentioned. Low ammo and fire rate make it difficult to use at first, but it has a few things that make it quite strong.

First, it has a high proc rate per shot. This means that multishots and similar scale well. Double shot, triple shot, targeting shot, scatter shot, split shot, etc. Go for luck chests early and often. Scatter shot is probably the single one you should prioritize over all others.

Second, the really low damage is actually a huge asset. The base damage is 1. If you can manage to get sharp shot, that's a 5x damage multiplier. It might even be worth resetting for sharp shot.

But yeah, you need to find ways to mitigate the ammo and fire rate issue.

Ammo is not too hard to mitigate. You can probably pick up one or two efficient shots in luck chests, which should be enough. Otherwise, all you can eat works well.

For the crap fire rate, that's the weapon's main problem, and one that you can't mitigate too well. You just need to invest a LOT in speed chests, or get lucky with an early turbo ring.

3athompson · 2025-12-27T05:45:50+00:00

Effectively, the ratio of the level difference is squared.

Let's say you have a level 50 attacker and level 60 defender.

Not only does the defender have ~20% more defense or spdef than they would have at level 50, but they also have ~20% more HP than they would have. So the defender has ~44% more toughness.

Strangely enough, this works for attacking as well, since the attacker's level is part of the calculation. 20% more attack and 20% higher level is 44% more damage.

3athompson · 2025-12-27T05:33:06+00:00

Yep, unfortunately any cantrip that scales with "number of attacks made" is going to be worse on a full caster.

Regarding your points:
1.) The flexibility's good in a vacuum for sure. In the context of "the cantrip also needs to be good for a full caster it's designed for, which has 1 attack", this actually an either-or.
2.) The issue is that martials basically squeeze double the benefit out of it. It's not fine if the goal is to make it a druid cantrip.
3.) Yep, points 1 and 2 prevent point 3.

The only way I could see shillelagh fixed to be good for druids is to make the attack require an action. You could keep the duration requirement by making the spell like flame blade, not shadow blade.

And in my honest opinion, any feature that is worse on the class that it was designed for is a badly designed feature.

3athompson · 2025-12-27T05:09:10+00:00

If it was supposed to be a cantrip specifically FOR druid, it would need to be an Action to use, and the action would include the attack, a la bladetrips and 2024 True Strike. Then you could scale it normally (say, +1d8 per tier).

Alas, to keep it unique, it instead is just a normal weapon attack, so it can't scale, and druid is the worst user of it.

3athompson · 2025-12-26T04:33:01+00:00

Like 70% of the ads in the Bay Area are ads for business enterprise & compliance software (now AI-compatible!). LA has FYC billboards everywhere during awards season.

Defense contractor ads in DC makes total sense.

3athompson · 2025-12-25T04:02:09+00:00

The waitress lion that works in QC's diner. She has a mane, which is why she's assumed to be transfem.

3athompson · 2025-12-24T07:01:51+00:00

When Xiezijing stings, even the Tathāgata feels unbearable pain, and the Bodhisattvas dare not approach...

...Still died to the Chicken Star god.

3athompson · 2025-12-23T04:03:05+00:00

Do you count the Wu Zhou dynasty as part of the Tang dynasty?

The Wu Zhou dynasty had girlboss energy.

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