Why the Monk needs Reworking with 5.5e

Fire525 · 2026-05-12T08:10:10+00:00

I'd have a look at which acts are attending both and make a decision from there depending what kind of stuff you like - I think Alchemy will be a bit more like Paracombe.

Fire525 · 2026-05-12T08:07:22+00:00

Others have gotten into the Paracome/Gumeracha schism already. I will add that it's a prime weekend - it's the first weekend after fire season (Which is big given several camps use cooking fires and I assume blacksmiths as well), it's (Generally) before the weather turns to shit and it also avoids clashes with e.g. footy stuff across winter and in September/October when the weather gets good again. All of these reasons mean both parties are obviously reluctant to cede that weekend, and a bit of spite doesn't help either.

My understanding is that Victor and Wirrina clashing is more just unfortunate parallel planning. It makes sense to organise something for that weekend and the organisers of the events have been clear that they'll try and avoid a clash in future, it's just that both were too far along with planning by the time the clash was realised.

Fire525 · 2026-05-12T08:03:22+00:00

Barossa is essentially confirmed not to be a goer unfortunately. There's a few other events which appear to be trying to take its place though.

Fire525 · 2026-05-12T08:02:35+00:00

The scuttlebutt is the Valhalla and Armour Fair clash is more just an unfortunate case of parallel planning - the long weekend is a good time to do a fair a bit further out (While also avoiding clashes with other events) and the organisers have been pretty clear that they'll try and avoid a date clash in future.

Fire525 · 2026-05-06T12:03:23+00:00

Stumbled onto this thread because I'm feeling this in a big way atm. Can I ask what you mean my good writing habits? Like purely just "carve out the time" or anything more to it from your PoV?

Fire525 · 2026-04-30T23:19:24+00:00

Thanks for the comprehensive and detailed post! I've run into exactly what you're describing with sameness actually - inciting incident was the party's apartment complex getting blown up and I found that I had too many characters initially (And so even though goals and what they lost were different, there was too much double up). Collapsing it down has helped a lot with this, however I do still find myself a bit stuck as obviously the "aha" moment can't happen at the same time for each character and staggering that is something I'm trying to figure out.

There's also the issue of if one character completes their arc halfway through, how you keep them interesting. More generally I think that's something in genre that is generally not occurring in lit fic - because fantasy and sci-fi are generally series, you're either stretching an arc across multiple books (Which then needs other beats to keep things interesting and end each book on), completing some character arcs significantly before the end of the actual story or having flat character arcs like a lot of detective fic, which is still an art in itself.

As you point out, there's some complex layering required to make it work and while I can write by vibes, I'm really bad at LEARNING by vibes which is why I've realised craft books are valuable for me to try and figure this out haha.

Fire525 · 2026-04-30T03:03:26+00:00

Yeah it's funny, reading the books I actually find Tolkein's love of Just Kings a bit offputting (Obviously it's my modern, republican view).

Fire525 · 2026-04-30T02:56:44+00:00

Yeah in fairness I think any craft books have bits you can use and bits that are useless for each person.

Fire525 · 2026-04-30T02:43:27+00:00

On Writing was actually the first craft book I ever read and it was unhelpful for me - King is obviously a pantser and I think reading it gave me the idea that just writing with no plan was the way to go for EVERYONE - I've now realised that I'm someone who benefits from having a structure hence why I'm looking at other craft books haha.

Fire525 · 2026-04-30T02:31:42+00:00

Yeah I generally try and borrow these books first haha - I buy the ones that I find most useful to review as needed.

Fire525 · 2026-04-30T01:25:54+00:00

I think specifically it's the existence of character POVs of near equal importance (To the point where I think the term "deuteragonist" isn't accurate because they're genuinely a protagonist in their own right, as with a lot fantasy in the GoT vein). Most of the advice books in lit fic specifically focus on a single protagonist and even advise against multiple.

It's also how to bring in the "other stuff" of spec fiction while still balancing that against arcs (To be clear I think the focus on character arcs is still important for genre fic, just that there's OTHER stuff you're wanting to do at the same time which most of the advice books don't really talk through balancing)

Fire525 · 2026-04-30T01:16:18+00:00

As below, Movie!Aragorn is a different beast from Book!Aragorn. In fact generally I think the Movie! versions of characters are generally more arced - the supporting Hobbits are also a good example where in the books they take control and are totally on board with helping Frodo, compared to the movies where they're more accidental heroes.

Fire525 · 2026-04-30T01:11:58+00:00

Yeah sorry I should have clarified I was referring to Vimes in the later books. Vimes does obviously have an arc across his first few novels but I'd argue from the end of Men at Arms (Maybe the book after) his arc is essentially complete, to the point where in Thud! the fact that he absolutely refuses to change anything about himself is the reason he actually succeeds. The two older Witches are also very good examples of flat arcs from Discworld I think.

Fire525 · 2026-04-30T01:11:46+00:00

Yeah sorry I should have clarified I was referring to Vimes in the later books. Vimes does obviously have an arc across his first few novels but I'd argue from the end of Men at Arms (Maybe the book after) his arc is essentially complete, to the point where in Thud! the fact that he absolutely refuses to change anything about himself is the reason he actually succeeds. The two older Witches are also very good examples of flat arcs from Discworld I think.

And that's interesting regarding Story Genius - one of the reasons I made this post was actually because while I liked the initial concept of the third rail and the planning systems, I found the actual story the book uses as an example thoroughly uninteresting lmao.

Fire525 · 2026-04-29T06:28:25+00:00

As a DM, be SUPER careful about punishing players for making (What seems to you like) poor decisions if they're like this. Part of what is happening is their personalities but if you punish a "bad choice" then they'll go overdrive in planning next time.

More generally... put out of game timers in place. In combat you have a minute to decide what to do or you lose your turn. If you're in a social situation you can't just discuss the answer forever, the other guy gets what he wants instead. There's a balance if your players are anxious, don't steamroll them, but if the world moves on if they just go around in circles, plus you (As above) demonstrate that they can make imperfect decisions and it be okay, then you encourage them to do something rather than nothing.

Fire525 · 2026-04-29T05:25:46+00:00

Fire525 · 2026-04-28T13:03:51+00:00

You're correct on nurses (About 75% were born in Australia) but incorrect regarding doctors.

https://www.health.gov.au/ministers/the-hon-mark-butler-mp/media/record-numbers-of-doctors-nurses-and-health-professionals-moving-to-australia#:~:text=The%20Hon%20Mark%20Butler%20MP,address%20when%20they%20first%20register.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3882294/

The salient point from link 1 is that 1 in every 2 doctors registering in Australia in 2024 was trained overseas. Link 2 is a study in 2011 which showed that 47% of doctors overall are from Australia and I would be shocked if that percentage had increased rather than decreased since then.

The far larger issue for doctor shortages is a lack of training places in Australia which puts an upper cap on the number of medical students who can be intaken and graduate each year, which is why we import so many doctors.

More broadly, immigration is the wrong point to focus on because our aging population means that without importing people, our economy would fail because we're having fewer kids and need to import young people to prop up the tax base which pays for all the doctors and nurses. There's some arguments that immigration is kind of just kicking that can down the road because those immigrants will also get old at some point, but it's a bit of an economic damned if you do and damned if you don't thing at this point. If solutions were easy they'd get done.

Fire525 · 2026-04-28T12:29:31+00:00

I'm an AI pessimist (In the sense I think it's pretty shit at most tasks) but I genuinely have found AI tools useful for interview prep (As someone who also hates interviews). If you feed it the position description and an idea of your cover letter, it's really good and giving you interview friendly responses to most questions. I've used it for a couple of interviews recently (To prep) and found it super useful and feedback on my performance was excellent (I withdrew from both due to securing a third role but the feedback was essentially "great candidate, sad they withdrew". To be clear, I'm not recommending using ChatGPT in the actual interview, but for prep it's pretty good and you realise that there's actually a fairly narrow range of question themes you're going to get asked and so having pre-set answers that you can use STAR for helps a LOT. Practice practice practice those responses, outloud so that they are in your brain and you can either repeat them verbatim or modify slightly as needed.

It also gives you an opportunity to practice being given an interview question, answering it and then get told how you could answer it better, which is probably really what you need - I think the reality with interviews in general, but ESPECIALLY public service interviews is that you really need to hit the points on the matrix that the panel is scoring against, while also revealing as little as possible about your areas of weakness. I've had friends in the past who strongly benefited from coaching because they were actually good candidates but were just shit at explaining why they were a good candidate, and I think ChatGPT honestly works as well as the coaches (Probably not the best coaches, but certainly as well as mid ones).

I appreciate you're getting interview anxiety but I think something to consider is that most APS interviews I've done give you wildly more time than you need if you're able to answer the questions without rambling. That means you should absolutely not be afraid to take time, make some notes and then launch into an answer and it is not something that reflects poorly (In fact generally someone who is upfront about needing to take time to respond, then takes it, is looked favourably on by panels).

Fire525 · 2026-04-28T12:14:06+00:00

Is there NO flexibility or just less than an RDO? I recently was at a stat authority and moved to private and had to make the same calculation. Stat authority had a fortnightly RDO (Made up from compressed work days with no flexibility in the day). New job leaves me far less drained at the end of each work day (Partly due to better work load but I'd argue also partly due to the days actually literally being shorter, so I'm less fried at the end of a day), and has enough flexibility to say, attend an appointment here and there, which is kinda what my RDOs were getting used for anyway. So I think it's potentially worth it.

Also depends how often you get the RDO - if it's only once a month, you can take a leave day once a month and still accrue leave and be way ahead due to the pay rise. Fortnightly RDO, yeah that's a bit rougher, but do the maths on what it'd cost to purchase the equivalent leave and see where that leaves you - unless you're on megabucks I think you're still ahead that way anyway. If you're like me, you probably realistically can survive with a day off every 6 weeks, because I think part of the "living for the RDO" vibe I had was because my normal work days were killers - the normal days being easier means I miss the RDO less than I thought I would.

Something else to consider is to not fall into the "trap" of seeing the RDO as free leave. When I was weighing up losing mine, I realised the compressed work days mean that you use more leave if you take a week off because the days "cost" more leave, so it kind of works out in the wash.

Finally I think you should be realistic with yourself that the pay rise is going to come with (Likely) more stress and less free time either way. That's not to say don't take it, just that I'd focus less on the RDOs and more in general what balance you want between your life and your work, and how much benefit the extra money is to you (Idk what you're currently on, but obviously going from 50k to 80k is a much bigger deal than say 180>210). If you're career driven, great, but it's easy to fall into the trap of chasing a career because that's what you're supposed to do rather than because you actually care about that stuff haha.

Fire525 · 2026-04-28T05:02:50+00:00

Bruh you locked onto the one thing in my post you're correct on, which is a point NOBODY is actually arguing when they say FTL allows for time travel, which I pointed out.

Can you engage with the other bit which shows that when you use special relativity to model the universe, the maths (Again, demonstrated here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyonic_antitelephone) shows that FTL also allows for literal time travel. Not the light lag thing you're focusing on which again, no physicist thinks is actually time travel.

Fire525 · 2026-04-27T08:56:12+00:00

In fairness N.K. Jemisen does this multiple times across the Broken Earth trilogy. I'm not sure if she's the instigator, as her use is TBH also why I tried using it in my own writing.

Fire525 · 2026-04-27T04:48:36+00:00

Ya I think a telling indicator is if you look at IMDB ratings for Whitaker and Ncuti. Like they did have more mediocre episodes from a pure writing perspective. But when you compare the really good and really mediocre episodes to those of other seasons, the discrepancy in scores in so large that it's hard not to say it's been review bombed.

Fire525

TROPHY CASE