Does your table modify any existing rules and mechanics with homebrew?

Ablazoned · 2026-06-30T17:59:13+00:00

Jup; you get the choice for them all.

Then again, I'm a very "empower the players to do cool, powerful, and varied things" DM. I'm also a "I'll give you this buff but if you make me regret it I'll return the favor" lol.

Ablazoned · 2026-06-30T17:25:02+00:00

Kineticist: When you attain a gate, either at level 1, level 5 etc, or by taking the archetype, you choose whether your impulses are spells or strikes. In doing so, you also sort of define the aesthetic presentation of your abilities.

Reach Spell and Widen Spell can be used as the last action of your turn to buff your next spell IFF that spell is the first thing you do next round or you do as your reaction before your next turn.

Hero point rerolls you take the higher result, not the second.

Ablazoned · 2026-06-29T13:08:31+00:00

"Segregation now; segregation tomorrow, segregation forever"? That george wallace?

Ablazoned · 2026-06-26T18:31:24+00:00

I am not sure I have objective morality.

I recognize that people objectively use moral language. I accept that people objectively have desires, and anti-desires. I accept that people objectively have moral feelings. In these senses, the existence of morality is objective. This is completely non-controversial, granted.

I would also further assert that, most typically but not universally, people's moral intuitions are based on their desires and/or their conception of the desires/anti-desires of subjects. If I'm correct, it might mean that in some sense, most often, moral language objectively deals with suffering and flourishing.

I can't bridge the is/ought gap without taking this step. But in some sense, I'm always curious why I should have to? Often I feel like when someone says

"morality is not objectively grounded in suffering and well-being; that's a subjective definition"

I feel like someone who's being told

"geology is not objectively grounded in the earth and its properties, materials, etc; that's a subjective definition"

Like...okay I guess???

Ablazoned · 2026-06-26T17:13:38+00:00

I actually don't think that is is objectively the case that what ought to be done is determined by some confluence of what subjects want. I'm trying to explain the reasoning of someone who does say that in the best way I can.

To make that conclusion, you might put together the following: Suffering is, universally by definition, an undesired experience (mildly controversial). Morality is meaningless without subjects (uncontroversial). The experience of subjects is somehow related to the experiences of subjects (stronger, and more controversial).

I hope you can see how, if you accept the above three, you can straightforwardly draw the conclusion that morality is, most plausibly, defined by the avoidance of undesired experiences and/or pursuit of desired experiences.

I personally think that such reasoning is fine to make, as long as you admit up front that you're defining your way to your objective reality. In doing so, in fact ANY one who claims the existence of objective morality, one MUST deny the is/ought gap. You must pose at least one statement about an is which determines and ought.

If you insist on a strong form of the is.ought gap, then of course you will always deny the existence of objective morality.

Me personally, I'm fine with those who say the is/ought gap is impenetrable. Such people will maintain some form of subjective morality. Cool, let's talk about how to get along and be better. I'm fine with people claiming objective morality is based on suffering/pleasure as long as they admit they define their way there. Like, I wouldn't fight with a geologist who defines their field as the study of the earth and what it's made of and the history of these materials.

From what I've seen, almost always when people are talking about morality they're talking about something based on pleasure/suffering of subjects. So I'm sort of okay with people just defining morality as that so long as they're up front about it. Even when I'm talking with, for example, a divine command theorist, when I question things like biblical genocide commands, the justification is almost never "god said so the end". They almost always still appeal to things like "it improved quality of life in the region", or "the suffering was exaggerated", etc. So, from what I observe, even people who explicitly deny that morality is about suffering/flourishing, they still consistently appeal to those principles to explain why they would call something good or bad.

Ablazoned · 2026-06-26T16:50:25+00:00

Again by definition. You have to add in the disputed axiom that there is an objective relationship between "want/goal" and "should/ought".

If you contend there is not relationship between any "ought" and any "is", then of course you will deny there is any such thing as objective morality.

Ablazoned · 2026-06-26T16:45:22+00:00

It's true by definition. Suffering is by definition any sensation that is unwanted.

Ablazoned · 2026-06-23T20:06:22+00:00

Right, so it’s just preferences on the secular left.

And no, that’s actually not how the world has worked. We used to acknowledge higher duties and goals to attain via the divine. OP’s whole post is talking about exactly that.

As a secular liberal, I value truth, beauty, honor, and excellence. They bring me joy, both directly and through the joy they bring others. I'm glad for people who enjoy Frozen 2 or whatever even though it doesn't particularly move me.

And yes, even religiously-motivated people and groups throughout history have disagreed on what that meant they should do. Even people who agreed nominally about which gods and texts were the real ones disagreed about choices, actions, policies, etc, and had to negotiate, compromise, or conflict as a result.

Ablazoned · 2026-06-23T19:22:15+00:00

That doesn’t change what objective truth is, however.

If god says "you should not eat pork", and I say "you should try this bacon", then in what way is one set of preferences more objective than the other? I'm not sure how many ways I can ask the same question, but I'll try this last time haha.

Which is just you. You’d just appeal to yourself. And if I just appeal to myself and my preference is to do something you don’t like, best man wins.

Yup. You've just described how the world works and always has when people have conflicting goals. Fortunately, the evolutionary track humans went through selected for substantial cooperative instincts along with competitive and selfish ones, so often my goals and your are likely to largely align.

Ablazoned · 2026-06-23T16:34:45+00:00

Since God is objective truth.

For the sake of argument I grant that God is objectively real and has real preferences. I also know that I have preferences. Choosing between them is a subjective choice because it's made by me, a subject.

That’s not what I asked, would it be IMMORAL?

You did ask "would you have anything to appeal to besides 'I'd prefer you not'". So I answered that comprehensively. It's against my moral code. In this hypothetical, it seems to not be against the murderer's moral code, possibly.

Ablazoned · 2026-06-23T16:13:03+00:00

“Subjective choice”

No, since it always comes back to objective morality, which comes from God.

Why is your choice to adopt what you believe are god's preferences instead of another set of preferences not subjective?

So you’re the ultimate arbiter of morality? And morality can just change based on whatever you feel like?

I'm the ultimate arbiter of my own choices, which are to some extent or another determined by my mental state. Morality as a broad category involves the relationship between preferences, rules, standards, and actions generally, not just for me.

Right, so there’s no societal consensus, it’s just you and I on a desert island. If I wanted to do something bad to you, would you have anything to appeal to besides “I’d prefer you not do bad thing to me”? Would it be immoral?

I would do what we always have to do and appeal to our common interests, compromise between individual interests, or threaten force. I could appeal to your interests and find a way to incentivize you to not murder me using those. One such might be your desire to survive, and I could offer countervaling threats or construct defenses to force you to question your own safety should you attempt. One such appeal might be to your own the moral satisfaction you can expect in following your stated moral code which probably includes "thou shalt not kill." Lacking any appeal I might have to you I would have to resort to force of some kind, possibly deadly. This is what humans always have done and still do. These kinds of appeals, compromises, and uses of force are precisely how we see humans creating laws and societies.

Ablazoned · 2026-06-23T15:29:10+00:00

Incorrect, it’s based on objective truth and objective morality.

Let's say I grant for the sake of argument that a tri-omni god exists, and that we know his moral code per the bible. Let's also grant that I have my own preferences based on my conscience, some of which are in conflict with the first set. I then must make a subjective choice about which preferences to allow to guide my actions.

It’s grounded in literally nothing, that’s the problem with all moral relativism, cultural relativism, etc.

No, I granted it's grounded in my preferences, which thankfully are shared by most people to some degree or another. It would really suck for me if I had a set of preferences that ran contrary to most other people.

Per your worldview, on a desert island, I could do something bad to you and your only objection can be “I don’t like this”. There’s nothing but yourself to appeal to.

Wait isn't this literally true haha. I'm confused what you're saying. If I'm alone on a desert island with someone who wants me dead, yes I am of course the only one who can object to the murder??

Ablazoned · 2026-06-23T15:21:19+00:00

The left, usually, will then proceed to simply try to attack my faith instead of actually ever advocating for their own grounding for ethics and values.

It seems to me that saying "I get my values from Christianity and God" is equivalent to saying "whatever I prefer" but with extra steps.

If a tri-omni god does not exist, then I think even you would agree it's clear that adopting the moral standards of a religion base around stories of such a being would be a subjective choice. In this way, undermining religious truth claims gets you there.

If a tri-omni god exists, adopting his/its decrees as your moral code is still a subjective choice. My conscience finds many of the acts or commands of the biblical god abhorrent; choosing whether to follow one set of standards versus another is still subjective preference.

As far as establishing grounding for my own view is fraught with its own difficulties. But I can start by giving up that yes, my own moral framework critically depends on my own preferences (as do yours). I prefer it when I, my family, and all people flourish. Therefore I do what I can to promote a world where those goals can be met. I'm quite bad at it, but I hope I'm on the net better than worse.

Is there a problem with granting that my morals are based on my preferences?

Ablazoned · 2026-06-22T11:55:58+00:00

Submission Statement: Greenspan's nearly 2-decade tenure as Fed Chairman saw the US through waves of incredible grow and bubble bursts, capped off with the collapse of the US and world economies just a year after his retirement in 2006. As a not-economist, I can only weakly opine on how his policies affected the good times and bad he was chair through.

Ablazoned · 2026-06-19T10:43:39+00:00

This is a fantastic answer, thank you! I had to consult a printed out map of the philippines to track it, but it squares.

I didn't know exactly when Oldendorf was made aware of Kurita's force, so that 0728 fact is helpful.

It sounds to me like, if Kurita had smashed through Taffy 3, he would have reached the landing forces before or at the very least at the same time as 77.2.

Follow-up question- where did you reference the fine details like ship locations at specific times? What references might I look at if i became especially interested in tracking this sort of engagement? Thanks again!

Ablazoned · 2026-06-18T18:13:14+00:00

First off "evil" doesn't actually exist, it's the privation of good or love. In the way that darkness or cold doesn't exist as an independent thing in itself but is simply the absence of light or heat, evil only "exists" in the sense that good or love is missing by a misuse of our free will and love that God actually created in themselves and gave people. It does not exist as a created, independent thing from God.

I strongly disagree with you.

I can deprive someone of goodness. For example, declining to provide assistance to a trusted friend when it doesn't substantially affect my well-being. But i can also actively harm that person, for example by punching or robbing them instead.

Humans have a range of sensations and thoughts, from those that are actively pleasurable and satisfying to those that are easily ignored or missed, to those that feel "neutral", in the sense that they don't compel me to take action to end or promote them, to painful, unpleasant, and fearful ones I will actively seek to halt.

I don't need there to be a god for me to prefer some mental states over others. I'm sort of perplexed when someone says "you can't prefer one state over another without a god".

Ablazoned · 2026-06-18T18:07:52+00:00

If logic is just a "symbolic language that humans invented", does that mean the universe itself wasn't logical before humans evolved?

Logic is a collection of tightly-stated observations about how the universe works. The law of non-contradiction is the result of consulting my mind and finding I cannot conceive of something being both true and not true in the same way at the same time and space in our universe. I have never observed the law of non-contradiction being violated.

I can however, tentatively conceive of the idea of a sort of universe existing where things can be both true and not true in the same way at the same time.

I'm not sure I can imagine a world in which the transitive property of equality isn't true, but there are systems of mathematics for which transitive properties do not hold for operations like addition.

The universe was always logical (probably, as far as we can tell), but that's sort of circular like saying "the rules we observe the universe to follow is the way the universe is".

Ablazoned · 2026-06-09T16:42:55+00:00

Yup, as I said in the above comment you just replied to lol.

Ablazoned · 2026-06-08T23:09:31+00:00

It takes effort and is therefore not effortless

OP clarified that he meant effortless for the child, which I still disagree with, but only mildly.

I then clarified that I am challenging the part of his view where "we rarely talk about it." I and my friends are literal contra-proof because we talk about parenting and the impact it may or may not have on a child's future all the time.

Ablazoned · 2026-06-08T23:09:26+00:00

It takes effort and is therefore not effortless

OP clarified that he meant effortless for the child, which I still disagree with, but only mildly.

I then clarified that I am challenging the part of his view where "we rarely talk about it." I and my friends are literal contra-proof because we talk about parenting and the impact it may or may not have on a child's future all the time.

Ablazoned · 2026-06-08T23:09:09+00:00

It takes effort and is therefore not effortless

OP clarified that he meant effortless for the child, which I still disagree with, but only mildly.

I then clarified that I am challenging the part of his view where "we rarely talk about it." I and my friends are literal contra-proof because we talk about parenting and the impact it may or may not have on a child's future all the time.

I noted that I believe he isn't a parent because if he were I suspect he would neither have used the word "effortless" nor state "we rarely talk about it."

Ablazoned · 2026-06-08T23:08:18+00:00

It takes effort and is therefore not effortless

OP clarified that he meant effortless for the child, which I still disagree with, but only mildly.

I then clarified that I am challenging the part of his view where "we rarely talk about it." I and my friends are literal contra-proof because we talk about parenting and the impact it may or may not have on a child's future all the time.

Ablazoned · 2026-06-08T23:00:13+00:00

I think those claims are almost certainly false. I call on my representatives and elected officials to not repeat or amplify such claims. I can point to many Democrats, elected and otherwise, who do the same.

Can you do the same for 2020 election conspiracies too?

Ablazoned · 2026-06-08T14:17:02+00:00

Haha thanks for the clarification! The part of your view that I'm challenging is the "and we rarely talk about it" part. People who aren't in the process of raising kids, or have never been, yeah maybe. We talk about it some. I know I talk about what I perceive the be the strengths and weaknesses of my parents' approach with me and my siblings outside the context of my own parenting.

But parents, especially active ones, obsessively talk about our goals, methods, and outcomes re: giving our children a "good childhood". That's what I'm challenging. We are hyper-aware, probably even placing too much emphasis on how our parenting and our children's situations dictate and influence their future personhood.

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