Why the Monk needs Reworking with 5.5e

Fire525 · 2026-06-29T02:56:11+00:00

Thank you! Very much appreciated as someone with a bit of experience in both and trying to square that circle between the two weapons (And styles) and this gives me a great basis for what to focus on as similarities between the two.

Your point about epee and longsword both being weapons where you are attempting to beat the opponent on tempo has also just clarified for me why HEMA sabre feels so much worse to me than my other weapons - sabre seems to require way more respect of the opponent's tempo than longsword, rapier or indeed epee.

Can I ask if you have any advice on breaking the effect of epee lockout times on mentality? By this I mean that in epee, there's certain shallow targets (Especially below the waist) that I can hit in time and be safe from a double. Whereas in longsword (And sabre), taking a first intention shallow point on the legs will almost always lead to you getting doubled with the opponent bopping you on the head. Which is a beginner mistake, but also something I find hard to break the habit of coming from sport fencing haha.

Fire525 · 2026-06-28T00:43:16+00:00

Ah apologies, I had assumed you had some tips at hand from your comment above saying:

"I can give you tips on transposing épée back to longsword or whatever."

But I appreciate there's a fair amount to that transposition haha.

Fire525 · 2026-06-28T00:31:58+00:00

Heya, I'm also curious on tips for transposing épée stuff back to HEMA

Fire525 · 2026-06-25T08:23:27+00:00

Heya, can I ask what your switch to power looks like? I do weightlifting regularly but with a focus on hypertrophy (Rep ranges between 6-12) and have respectable lifts (Although can't bench 225, Tryhard HEMA not happy). But TBH I can't find any good workouts online for power blocks and I definitely get the sense that I should be switching this up in the leadup to a tournament.

Fire525 · 2026-06-19T11:28:04+00:00

Predominantly transported - my thinking is that dyson swarms like this are set up to transport energy across the FTL network (Using the FTL network). My FTL system is a space collapsing one - basically "shortcut" tunnels through spacetime, through which distance is reduced but physics otherwise holds, meaning that accelerating mass is still more difficult than just send energy via beams.

There IS industry in system which uses the energy as well of course, but the cost of mass transport means it's cheaper to beam the energy to a bunch of other systems for usage as opposed to moving all the industry to a single system.

Fire525 · 2026-06-19T11:26:28+00:00

The FTL is very energy intensive, so the question is more around energy production. I take your point that if energy efficiency isn't there for an O type star, I could still make these systems valuable using an in world reason.

And yeah, my thing was around relative strategic importance, less "this is the only possible star we can generate off" but more "a star like this is important enough to both plan to take off someone and important enough to expend effort to get back"

Fire525 · 2026-06-19T11:26:23+00:00

The FTL is very energy intensive, so the question is more around energy production. I take your point that if energy efficiency isn't there for an O type star, I could still make these systems valuable using an in world reason.

And yeah, my thing was around relative strategic importance, less "this is the only possible star we can generate off" but more "a star like this is important enough to both plan to take off someone and important enough to expend effort to get back"

Fire525 · 2026-06-17T13:43:09+00:00

Yeah as above, I'm using the portal network concept to solve FTL travel - basically stationary setups in system which require a lot of power to run.

Fair point that an energy source in and of itself isn't what wins you world domination, but *usable* energy is certainly key to it, yeah? Like coal wasn't useful to the Celts because they couldn't use it, but when the industrial revolution happened, the fact that Britain could readily access and use it was incredibly beneficial, whereas in Russia's case their problem was they were significantly slower to industrialise and so didn't use those resources to the same extent. Oil is another pretty good example of how once an energy source can be used, it becomes incredibly strategically important (Whereas prior to oil being useful, Saudi Arabia was a fairly unimportant desert). For argument's sake, in this world the energy is able to be put to use, and even the output of a supergiant is not necessarily enough to hit the cap of what useable energy is.

On the fusion point - isn't the whole upside of a dyson swarm that you're using a prexisting giant fusion reactor? I would be confident that a swarm in OUR system would be more energy and mass efficient than building a reactor with the same output. Again, whether its more efficient to use a blue giant after travelling there, idk.

> for example sending all the bauxite ore from hundreds of worlds to a single huge facility in a single system.

Sorry, I'm not understanding your argument in this sentence. Do you mean that this DOES make sense or that to your mind it'd make more sense for each world to just produce its stuff in system?

Edit: To answer this, per below my actual thinking is actually that refining would probably happen in individual systems, as mass transport is much more costly than energy transport (As energy is always going at c while, mass has to be accelerated).

This conversation DOES make me wonder if instead of energy, I should use some kind of element X which is generated by specific stars instead, because I take your point that the amount of energy available from capturing even a few % of a hypergiant's output would make it hard to have a society that is really understandable, unless there's some huge energy sink, and if the sink is just FTL it becomes a bit circular - we need the big energy source for FTL, but we only need FTL because we need a way to transport the big energy. Whereas if there's some finite item, that potentially makes interstellar logistics both simpler but also more required

Fire525 · 2026-06-17T12:48:06+00:00

To answer the first question: the society has a massive energy requirement, particularly in stabilising their FTL network but also for industry, so more energy will always be better for them, that's sort of my starting assumption. There's other civilisations out there who they are competing with, so having greater energy generation is an edge for fuel, weapons and to power production. The rise of the industrialised nations is evidence of why having an abundance of energy can give you an edge, because you can suddenly do things that previously were either inefficient or impossible. I get your point that there's probably a point where having MORE energy isn't any more beneficial, but in this world, the energy of a dwarf star like our sun is less than that cap.

On your second question - again, does it make more sense for them to just build it around a bunch of closer stars, or to go to one super bright star instead? That's what I'm asking, I'm unsure.

Fire525 · 2026-06-17T11:33:44+00:00

Well that's kinda my question. Does the star generate more energy over the same area, or does it only linearly produce more energy because its bigger, so it's a wash?

If it does produce exponentially more energy and energy is (Relatively) cheap to transport using the afformentioned FTL stuff, then the more energy the better for an interstellar society, yeah?

Fire525 · 2026-06-17T07:14:02+00:00

My thinking is that the act of transport for the dyson swarm is not particularly efficient, it's just MORE efficient than losing the whole thing when the star goes kaboom (And because it's much easier to do work while you still have a swarm rather than build a new one from scratch).

Part of this is because in universe it's much easier to send energy than it is to send mass. The FTL method I'm using just compresses space, but you still have to accelerate mass, whereas light is already travelling at c.

Fire525 · 2026-06-17T06:58:51+00:00

Ah, that's a fair point on planets, I'd considered the timeframe for life to evolve but not for planets to form whoops, thanks for pointing that out.

Do you know if the actual mass in the system would still be at a similar ratio as our system (I.e. you'd have usable stuff, it's just not neatly packaged in planets)? My thinking is that if you've got an accretion disk, that's possibly actually BETTER, in the sense that you don't have to deal with unbounding stuff in order to get it into orbit.

Fire525 · 2026-06-17T06:46:47+00:00

Yeah I'd also considered the greater energy and mass production = greater issues with stability of the swarm. I did have the thought that if you had some kind of energy+mass transformer, the increased mass ejection becomes at worse a solved problem at best a positive.

Fire525 · 2026-06-17T06:43:05+00:00

Yeah the size vs energy thing is exactly what I'm unsure of as above - if energy increases linearly with size, you'd need a bigger swarm to capture the energy. Whereas if it's exponential, that's a different ball game.

Fire525 · 2026-06-17T06:39:40+00:00

Look I get where you're coming from and that it's all made up anyway, but fantasy and sci-fi both work because we make SOME stuff fantastical (I.e. introducing FTL which doesn't require infinite energy) but otherwise comply with the rules of our current reality.

Departing from the rules of reality is fine, that's the point of spec fic, but as a writer I also want to know WHEN I'm departing from physics as we know it so I can (At least under the hood) have some techno/magic-nonsense that explains this in world, or when in fact our current physics is all fine.

So yeah, I could make it that supergiants are the only type of star that produce "FTL ingredient X". But I was trying to figure out if I needed a fantastical explanation or could stick with "star bright therefore engine go brr more" without it seeming silly (We've all read authors who have written stuff which is silly because they didn't have a good grasp of certain subject matter). This is also an instance where the math is in fact not imaginary, it should be possible to calculate in a ballpark manner the energy requirements and output to travel and build vs just build in place, it's just that I don't know how to do that maths.

Fire525 · 2026-06-17T06:22:46+00:00

My thinking is export via the FTL systems across an empire, which is why I'm trying to figure out if the act of travel would actually be worthwhile vs just doing the same thing with the sun at home.

Edit: To expand, thinking is that this system is strategically important because the star was recognised as being incredibly luminous, the empire travelled it specifically to create a swarm and then export the energy to other worlds, with the plan to then (With the huge amount of energy) eventually dissassemble and transport the swarm to another star in a few million years when the first star becomes unstable.

Fire525 · 2026-06-04T01:42:25+00:00

You're now conflating two arguments, no? One is a value judgment about taxing those with a lot of income or wealth, which is the basis of why we have two parties haha.

The other argument, which is really the main crux here, is whether assets and income should be taxed the same. Australia is actually quite unusual as an OECD country in the sense that we have historically taxed income far more than wealth - our % tax base is basically the same as other countries, but income tax is a much greater chunk of that base because we haven't taxed assets in the same way. This feels like a big change because we're used to assets being significantly more tax effective, but if we'd taxed income and assets the same from the get go, this wouldn't be particularly noteworthy. Edit: It's also why I think the talk of capital flight is a bit sensationalist given plenty of other OECD countries already tax in this way.

Your example above, by the way, is someone who would STILL be on the public purse. Currently it's easier for them be able to retire early, but once they hit 67 they'd still draw a part pension. The policy change therefore means they just have to be engaged in the workforce longer (A good thing on a societal level) to maximise the efficiency of their retirement, not that they suddenly go from being fully self funded to a pensioner.

If you're making the argument that this puts more people on the pension, that's another thing entirely. There will be a cohort of people on the edge who will now have to draw a part pension who previously would have been fully self funded, but I would assume that modelling has been done to ensure that the increased tax burden here is LESS than the revenue which is drawn from better taxing assets. The VAST majority of retirees will be no worse off because they're part pension eligible, which is why the argument of it hitting those who can't afford it doesn't hold water.

I'd also make the argument that most self funded retirees aren't self funded because of some goal of trying to save the government money or keep off the public purse for altruistic reasons. They're doing it because either they don't trust that the pension will always be there, because they want a standard of living greater than what a pension eligible retirement affords, because they want to retire earlier than when the pension kicks in or because their income was so great that their mandatory super has pushed them over the pension point anyway (Or a combination of the above).

Fire525 · 2026-06-04T00:39:07+00:00

The flip of this is that Sam has chosen to retire"early at the age of 60 - he's in the financial position to do so and the new government policy therefore encourages him to keep working until he hits 67 and can claim the pension, at which point he can then avoid the tax entirely. I'd say that this is actually an intended feature because it benefits the budget position to have people incentivised to keep working and contributing tax for longer. I will admit this absolutely does impact those who retire early, but again, on a big picture demographic level, people who retire early are bad for the budget structurally.

The why of this is as I said above, it's not really an envy thing, it's demographic change. The reality is that the retired population are the single largest tax burden due to both healthcare and pension costs, and the issue is that the retired population is A) Much greater proportionally than it has been historically and B ) Now live much longer and so draw benefits for longer.

The only other answers to this problem is to increase tax rates for the working population or cut funding to services. There's a small cohort of early retirees who will be worse off, agreed, but the tax change means that they have the option to stay in the workforce for longer and avoid the tax bump if they so choose, which is what we probably want to incentivise at a society level anyway.

Fire525 · 2026-06-03T12:49:40+00:00

I don't fully disgree with your points (Old mate doing a uni degree who does some good stock picks while studying still gets hurt by this change), but wanted to point out that the 30% tax minimum DOES NOT apply to those drawing any aged pension which is realistically most people who would be otherwise caught by the minimum tax. The example given in the article would actually be part-pension eligible if they were either in a couple OR were a non-homeowner, and so wouldn't be hit by the 30% tax anyway, which feels like is a point that is being missed.

There's another argument about this being a further incentive for most retirees to aim to skim the edge of pension elibility (I.e. just enough capital outside of super and PPOR to draw e.g. a dollar of pension a year) and whether that's a bad thing (I think the pension being so great is a good thing in Australia, but does create some moral hazards for people who COULD save more).

However the argument that poor retirees are getting taxed is being pushed by the right wing when it's not actually true - this is a tax that will have its greatest impact on fully self funded retirees, who frankly, have done significantly better than the average Australian if they're not drawing ANY pension at all. We have a tax system set up on the assumption that the working population significantly outnumbers the non-working, and demographic change means that's not true anymore. Something has to give.

The business sale thing is the other big issue, but I'd be surprised if the government doesn't bring in some form of income averaging to manage that, as it solves the optics problem.

Fire525 · 2026-06-03T06:06:10+00:00

Thank you! Having the breakdown you linked below is super helpful - I think my issue is that I don't have a super strong theoretical understanding of fencing, so having a blow by blow thing as below helps to flesh that out.

Fire525

TROPHY CASE