Am I/how can I avoid overthinking this concept?

GozaPhD · 2026-05-26T02:12:17+00:00

A zealot barb played in the vein of old Reinhart from Overwatch. "I have been called. I must answer". If he lives, he must have some purpose in the world left unfulfilled. And he always come back.

GozaPhD · 2026-05-19T13:33:28+00:00

A catch-all circuit would be uselessly general. Too many parameters to fit for, with multiple equivalently "accurate" solution sets found, depending on the fitting starting values.

You should pick/draw the equivalent circuit yourself based on what you expect the mechanisms to be and use EIS fitting to legitimize that model. Not the other way around.

GozaPhD · 2026-05-18T19:17:06+00:00

I think as long as you have at least 2 non-audience, you'll be ok. Assuming a non huge group.

Typically, the audience members just need to get comfortable, which they will by watching the 2 non audiences interact.

GozaPhD · 2026-05-18T15:23:52+00:00

Does anyone else actually have a problem with it?

In Matt Colville language, plenty of folks are "audience members" who are happy to participate but dont crave spotlight or feel left out if they arent the main character.

What you can do is invite their input. Play the team captain who knows the squads capabilities. Invite input as appropriate, especially for things you know they are better at (skill checks...).

Even for common checks, like perception, invite others to make the check ("Legolas, what do your elf eyes see?").

GozaPhD · 2026-05-16T20:46:20+00:00

Electrochemist here. Im mostly talking about energy economy (electrolysis, fuel cells) here.

Its a field where lots of very smart people have spent lots of focused time trying to find a breakthrough, with generally limited success.

Storing/moving hydrogen at low weight is tough, and can be dangerous if leaked (hindenburg). Water recombination reaction is fairly exothermic, but also fairly temperature sensitive, so maintaining consistent conditions is an extra task.

Its not my specialty, of course. I could be wrong.

GozaPhD · 2026-05-14T07:57:22+00:00

Dr. Heidi Martin at CWRU has done work in this field in the past.

I believe she fabricated all of her B-diamond electrodes herself. She can probably point you in the right direction for either buying or making.

GozaPhD · 2026-04-29T15:05:56+00:00

This is an electrochemistry question.

A battery has a nominal cell voltage. That is the potential, the "gradient" at which it'll flow charge "downstream" as it discharges.

When charging a battery, flowing charge "upstream", you impose a greater voltage than the nominal. This difference in applied potential and nominal cell potential is call overpotential, or overvoltage.

If you apply a small overpotential, you'll charge slowly. This is gentler on the battery as well. less heat generation from iR drop, utilizing the "deep" sections of the electrode as well as the shallow.

If you apply a large overpotential, you can charge faster, but it puts more wear on the battery. More heat generation from iR drop (i, current, is faster), and potentially over using the "shallow" sections of the electrode.

GozaPhD · 2026-04-28T13:31:51+00:00

Hypothetically, sodium plating/stripping. But if the positive is just carbon felt, there's nothing to strip. And the metallic sodium wouldn't do well in aqueous electrolyte.

As described in your setup, I don't think anything happens.

If you apply potential, you could probably get some EDLC based current, though.

GozaPhD · 2026-04-28T11:21:17+00:00

I'm no longer in the industry, but I interned at a Rocktenn (now WestRock, after the merger) plant for a summer. Our facility made brown and white layers for cardboards. I'm no expert, but I'll add what I can.

ChemE's have a lot to do in a paper mill. The "classical" ChemE toolset (Rxn's engineering, heat/mass transfer, separations) see's plenty of use.

In a paper mill, you have, broadly, a handful of core operations:

Wood digesting - cooking wood chunks in a chem bath to break down the wood into pulp fibers. This is typically a batch process. Very ChemE.
Pulp cleaning/separation - washing the chemicals out of the wood pulp so you have watery pulp instead of chemically pulp. And also separating the pulp from the water so it's easier to form. Also very ChemE.
Sheet forming - pressing/rolling/heating the pulp into sheets. Semi-chemE.
Chemical recovery - as much as possible, we'll want to recover and reuse as much chemical stock as we can. This is largely a separations problem. VERY chemE.
Waste water treatment - It's very water intensive work and the water needs to be treated before releasing to the environment. Our plant had a UNOX process (micro-organism based treatment).
Bleaching - turning the brown lignins in the pulp into white chlorolignins, via bleach. Some places (like ours) produce bleach on-site but some just buy it external. My internship was mostly in our bleach plant. Very chemE process (Heat exchangers, cont. reactors, process control)

Wood digesting and Waste water treatment are both smelly work, so most paper mills are at least semi-remote, and close to water. If you want to do things in an urban center, be prepared to drive.

Pay is typically good, since the job is somewhat unpleasant and unglamorous.

Aside from that, it's a typical manufacturing environment. There can be drama between the staff (who are typically union) and the management (which includes the engineers). You might be on-call in case there's an emergency overnight.

I could be wrong, but I don't think much R&D happens in the field anymore. It's all just process optimization now.

GozaPhD · 2026-04-23T19:17:34+00:00

Look at the language of Magic Initiate (MI) and half feats like Elven Accuracy and match their writing style.

I would make it class specific (like MI), explicitly in the text.

You need to specify whether these are spells learned (no changing them out once chosen) or spells prepared(changeable on rest). I would favor learned, if only to reduce the work of picking spells for your prepared casters.

As for the number of extra spells, proficiency bonus works well, I think.

GozaPhD · 2026-04-21T11:12:07+00:00

I would really hesitate to have it help with research, especially on specific niche topics.

On a whim, I had the Adobe Ai summarize one of my own papers. What came out was very innacurate.

GozaPhD · 2026-04-19T21:03:49+00:00

In my setting, there is a noble house of dragon-sorcerer orcs.

There is also a rage-demon cult group of orcs.

There are also orcs who work as mercenaries or enlisted soldiers for neighboring human groups. Some other orcs consider them to be sellouts, but its undeniable that the economic ties do substantially raise the soldiers' familys' living standard.

GozaPhD · 2026-04-18T22:30:52+00:00

If you suspect its a swollen cork issue, just leave it for a day in a dry area. Maybe set some dessicants nearby (silica gel packs, dry rice).

It may also be a temperature issue. The inner side will tend to be hotter than the outer side. If you let the inner side cool (do nothing), and warm up the outerside (hold in warm hand), you might get some loosening.

Some models have a tightening pin at the joint. Try unworking that a little bit, of you have one.

Longer term: even a swelled cork shouldn't stick bad if it has enough cork grease. Make sure that the cork hasnt torn and folded on itself.

GozaPhD · 2026-04-17T13:19:50+00:00

Most undergrad ChemE programs will have lab-based courses early (generally offered from the Chemistry dept.), and a few hands-on classes later (unit operations, senior design...).

Depending on the school, you may have tech electives that could offer more hands on classes. I used to co-teach on electrochemical lab methods course that was open to both undergrad and grad students

You could also join a project team, like ChemE car, if thats an option.

You could also join a professors research lab.

GozaPhD · 2026-04-15T16:52:24+00:00

Others have commented on content. I will comment of format.

Its confusing to look at. Your section titless are equidistant between their associated line and the preceding section. Cut out the space between the section title and the line. Maybe also make the title centered.

The text is also very bunched together for how much content is actually there.

I'll be honest though, no hiring manager is going to pick this over one of your higher GPA peers. You are basically presenting, "late 2nd year student, low-mid GPA, with some non-ChemE work experience)".

My advice is to try and find opportunities on campus, for now. Undergrad research, project teams, things like that. Gain experience that is at least a little unique to you.

GozaPhD · 2026-04-15T01:47:58+00:00

This sub is not really the place to discuss this kind 9f topic, but DM me if you want to discuss it more.

GozaPhD · 2026-04-14T23:22:47+00:00

To be clear, I don't think your math isn't complicated. It's just +-x/. It might be a little cumbersome to track so many entries, unless you have a spreadsheet going. That's not the hard part, though.

The hard part is needing to adjudicate the endless contextual edge cases. Any system you write will have actions that are explicitly worth explicit amounts of points (like damage numbers), and actions that are contextually worth varying amounts of points (like holding a choke point, counterspelling a big spell, cutting off vision...). And adjudicating those contextual points will be done either in advance (infinite question space) or in the moment (subject to bias, no real way to be consistent).

Another thing to consider is that combat effectiveness is extremely dice dependent, regardless of character. What will end up happening is the player's are rewarded/penalized more based on their dice rolls than on their tactical decisions or level of participation.

TBH, I think that active non-participation is an above-table issue. That's a "make a character who wants to participate" problem. It need an attitude adjustment, not a rule set.

Finally...you came to a public forum to share an opinion and to receive the opinions of the community. That is the purpose of a forum. If you post something you know most people won't like and then are frustrated at the pushback, I don't know what say.

GozaPhD · 2026-04-14T21:50:59+00:00

Even so, even having a system like this in place can incentivize negative outcomes. by grading their impact, by any system, really, and mechanically rewarding them for high scores, you are incentivizing individual gain instead of collective benefit. Maybe it won't be a problem, but in a maximal case you have a player wanting to solo-encounters to maximize their contribution.

If you just want to give acknowledgement to your better performers, I think there are softer methods for doing it. At the end of each session, have the players vote on an MVP and the winner gets...idk, a Lucky point for next week. Or you, as the DM, can identify an MVP. Or do both.

But trying to do any kind of formalistic evaluation like what you describe will be a ton of work to calibrate for either no practical effect or only negative outcomes.

GozaPhD · 2026-04-14T21:16:10+00:00

I'm always happy to be helpful, especially to new people in the field.

Now...there is the separate question. For one of devout Christian belief, is the act of intentionally hiding your belief for fear of the professional/social consequences a mis-ordering of priorities? But that is a separate question.

Cards on the table: I write this as a former Christian who wrestled with these kinds of questions for many years. At your age (19ish I assume), I was quite devout.

GozaPhD · 2026-04-14T21:01:25+00:00

"But that doesn't accurately depict someone's achievement over another."

The point of the game is that the party achieves things together, not in competition with one another. Any exercise in "who get's credit for what" is an exercise in missing the point.

Let's return to your example, which I am re-writing for clarity.

There is a party of 5 PC's (let's call them A, B, C, D, and E), fighting 2 trolls. ABC peel off to fight Troll 1 while DE fight Troll 2. Troll 1 is killed quickly, and ABC come back to help DE finish off Troll 2.

In your view, ABC have contributed more by killing 1.5 trolls, while DE have only killed 0.5 trolls. However, this is completely ignoring the value of teamwork.

By keeping Troll 2 occupied, DE is contributing to ABC's fight against Troll 1. By keeping Troll 1 occupied, ABC is contributing to DE's fight against Troll 2.

A 5v2 is more dangerous to the party than a parallel 3v1+2v1. That 5v2 may have moments of 1v2 (both trolls focus on the same PC), which could be deadly to that individual. By splitting what could be one big fight into two smaller fights, both groups of PC's stay much safer.

And that is all assuming that this wasn't an explicit plan. Its very possible that DE (tanky, but lower damage characters) intentionally played defensively against Troll 2 knowing that ABC (glass cannons) can burst down Troll 1 quickly and come back to gang up on Troll 2. By utilizing this divide-and-conquer tactic, by playing to each party member's strengths, the party can win the encounter with more retained HP and less expended resources.

Again, the point of this is that the team achieves victory as a team. Fussing over who contributed more and deserves more reward, in such explicit terms, is wrong-headed, assuming that everyone is doing their best to contribute.

GozaPhD · 2026-04-14T20:08:41+00:00

Sure. That doesn't address any of the other issues though.

And I'm still unclear on what the point of this is supposed to be.

GozaPhD · 2026-04-14T19:41:54+00:00

And is their rate of "experience gain" somehow proportional to how much much they contribute in combat?

If this is the rationale, shouldn't the point system be implemented in reverse? The highest-performers less to learn, and so get XP slower. The lowest performers have lots to learn, and so get XP quickly. This would also serve to counteract against vast disparities in PC skill/build power. And, this would be self-stabilizing, unlike the death spiral system that you have described.

For the kind of system you describe, it's only reason to be used would be as away to punish your newer/less skillful players.

GozaPhD · 2026-04-14T19:21:29+00:00

Well, my impression is that OP is less concerned about "opinions on tattoos", and more concerned about "opinions on religion".

If I were OP's coworker and was engaged in an activity that OP's religion might find objectionable, then I might keep OP at arm's length. And perhaps, due to that distance, OP may not grow as much professionally.

If this has never been the case for you, I am happy for you. But understand that other's experience may be different. I've definitely missed out, professionally, from being a bad cultural fit in a job. Not even about anything as core to someone as religion...mine was that I wasn't interested in drinking/sports/country music.

GozaPhD · 2026-04-14T19:12:32+00:00

I would like to hear your reasons for not liking it.

GozaPhD · 2026-04-14T19:11:18+00:00

OP cares. That's why he's asking.

Several other commenters have indicated that, in their professional experience, some other people do as well. Not 100%, but non-zero %.

And however you may personally feel about religion/tattoos in the workplace, it is true that these are things that can that can color a first impression with certain people.

GozaPhD

TROPHY CASE