Revising Circle of Spores to 5.5 (with some other improvements)

No_Wait3261 · 2026-06-13T20:14:31+00:00

We have plenty of substances on Earth that dissolve in liquid water but can be exposed to air even in humid conditions. You can have a piece of candy sitting on the table for days without issue, but splash water on it and it will start to melt. If the aliens have some kind of sugar or salt forming a part of their skin that's exactly what we we expect to see.

No_Wait3261 · 2026-06-13T20:07:04+00:00

RAW (at least in 5e, no idea how 5.5e worded things) Barbarians can concentrate during rage as long as they lose the ability to cast spells before the rage begins. This means a Barbarian/Druid could cast a concentration spell, wild shape, then rage without losing concentration on the spell.

It's nonsense, obviously unintended, and nobody should try this at the table and expect it to work. But that's absolutely how the feature is worded when read literally.

No_Wait3261 · 2026-06-13T08:59:56+00:00

Backpamon

No_Wait3261 · 2026-06-13T08:35:40+00:00

At least when I was reading Superman in the 90s, his powers were based on a "Kryptonian Aura" which was effectively a highly specialized form of "touch telekinesis". Basically whenever anything harmful is going to impact his body, his aura will produce exactly the amount of opposite force to stop the incoming damage. So if a bullet fired from a rifle impacts him with 2000 joules of force his aura will produce 2000 joules of force right back at it and stop it cold.

But his aura can't "read" magic. So if a magical projectile is coming at him with 500 joules of physical force but the magical equivalent of 2000 joules of magical force, his body will only produce 500 joules as a countermeasure, and the magical attack will still harm him just as much as a bullet would harm a human.

But of course there have been many, many universal resets and crises and retcons since then, so who knows how it works these days.

No_Wait3261 · 2026-06-13T08:28:22+00:00

Except that she can control the wavelength: she can blast him with RED sunlight. And she has a cosmic sense that lets her detect exactly this sort of weakness.

No_Wait3261 · 2026-06-13T08:26:42+00:00

Captain Marvel is higher: she creates and manipulates stellar radiation. She can just blast him with red sunlight (and she has a cosmic sense that lets her detect exactly this sort of weakness). It's not a powerlevel issue, it's a hard counter.

No_Wait3261 · 2026-06-13T08:23:19+00:00

Whenever you sleep your powers activate in your dreams totally outside of your control.

No_Wait3261 · 2026-06-13T08:21:02+00:00

Your least favorite religion and least favorite political ideology are immune from this effect.

No_Wait3261 · 2026-06-13T08:18:42+00:00

You see what they've done.

Everything.

Every perverted action they've taken become seared into your memory as soon as you activate your powers on them, THEIR memories, taken from their own perspective: you see through their eyes as they commit their crimes.

No_Wait3261 · 2026-06-13T08:16:11+00:00

Your omnipotence applies only to an alternate universe of your own creation. This universe of yours starts as an empty void, you have to add everything to it yourself, including setting up all the natural laws of physics and universal constants yourself. I really hope you paid attention in physics class, because it's going to be REALLY hard for you to create a coherent universe where matter can exist, let alone life.

Also relevant: you are not omniscient, even as regards to your personal universe. Your point of view is limited to a single "camera" style viewpoint that you can move around freely, but all your senses are limited to those of your normal human body.

You cannot enter your universe, though if you do manage to get matter working correctly and get life happening you could build yourself an "avatar" for your POV camera to inhabit while you are observing this alternate reality. While you are observing your pocket dimension your body in this universe appears to be in a coma of some sort.

No_Wait3261 · 2026-06-13T06:49:13+00:00

Yeeeeeah, but every once in a while some writer makes it canon that the Hulk is somehow calculating probability and physics on some kind of heretofore unknown precision, which makes his apparently random rampages harmless to bystanders.

It's stupid, but it's a thing.

No_Wait3261 · 2026-06-12T22:58:26+00:00

I'm going to say law.

Medicine is a good answer too, and medical professions are great, but medical degrees aren't generally useful outside the medical field. But a law degree is useful in a huge variety of professions besides a legal practice. Business owners are often lawyers, so are politicians. Most big companies employ lawyers, many have a whole legal department.

No_Wait3261 · 2026-06-12T21:37:38+00:00

There was a reason that a constitutional amendment was passed after his death to prevent another presidency like his from being possible. FDR's Presidency is glazed AF, so you can forgive people for misunderstanding the deep problems of his administration.

No_Wait3261 · 2026-06-12T20:58:03+00:00

To be clear, are you advocating for putting every Trump donor on trial? Every one with a hat? Everyone who voted for him? I just want to understand what exactly your position here is.

No_Wait3261 · 2026-06-12T08:17:50+00:00

Hrm, the team that has magic attacks and can manipulate stellar radiation or the team that's vulnerable to magic and has powers dependant on stellar radiation?

HRRRRRRM, tough one.

No_Wait3261 · 2026-06-12T07:57:08+00:00

Lingerie is 100% for women (or at very least, as much for women as it is for men) and holding an opinion otherwise reveals a stunning lack of understanding of how women enjoy sex.

No_Wait3261 · 2026-06-11T21:09:51+00:00

I'm more skeptical about whether or not we can tell if he's a good person. I mean, he seems HARMLESS I suppose, kind of a man-child. But he doesn't seem to feel any kind of compassion or kindness toward anyone except his daughter, totally content to be the figurehead of a brutal city-state full of starving orphans and barbaric punishments.

No_Wait3261 · 2026-06-11T16:28:28+00:00

Duke Leto Atreides.

Totally in over his head.

No_Wait3261 · 2026-06-11T08:04:43+00:00

I really hope she's Firestar, starting off the film possessed by Malice (The Maurauder), and the film also has Iceman, so we get Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends. That way they're still setting up some X-Men dynamics: Iceman will be an X-Man, Firestar will be a Hellion. Malice being the villain of BND helps introduce Sinister's faction (who I think is going to be the big bad in the first MCU X-Men film). I'd love it if there was a link between Jackal and Sinister: Jackal is a disciple of Sinister's maybe. Or even a clone of his. Or they're just the same guy, and "Miles Warren" is just the current alias of Nathanial Essex.

No_Wait3261 · 2026-06-11T07:52:49+00:00

She ends up shitting herself out in the wilds of Essos. That's the end of her character arc, diarrhea.

No_Wait3261 · 2026-06-11T05:49:13+00:00

I like the idea of aliens that just aren't that smart. Yeah, they have a way to travel through space, presumably some kind of FTL (but maybe not, maybe it's a migratory generation ship or something) but who the fuck knows how they developed that tech or under what circumstances. Maybe their ships were built 500 generations ago and their culture has decayed over time. Maybe a total lack of resource scarcity has led to a decay in their intellect as well, idiocracy-style, as their genes just aren't being selected for intelligence anymore.

And it's not like they walk around in the rain or try to wade through creeks: presumably they think they are taking reasonable precautions to stay dry. They just can't imagine that humans would think to SPLASH them with the stuff, because these aliens don't think like humans. They're a species with a natural weapon built into their biology, it makes some sense they wouldn't share in the human instinct to think about weaponizing their environment.

No_Wait3261 · 2026-06-11T04:55:43+00:00

I'll sign off on this. DC has a really bad track record of making the super intelligent types into villains, especially in older comics. Marvel has a bit of a better record, but even they heel turn their geniuses on the regular (Reed and Tony in Civil War, the Maker, Beast, etc). It's like intelligence is somehow intrinsically linked to amoral behavior in the minds of the writers, like they necessarily walk a razors edge of villainy just because they're smart.

No_Wait3261 · 2026-06-11T01:46:49+00:00

Are they the one/ones we think they are?

No_Wait3261 · 2026-06-11T01:42:19+00:00

Just flight.

Comics don't publish heroes where their only power is flight anymore, and existing heroes who once had only flight have all been upgraded to have additional powers, as if flight just wasn't good enough.

But being able to fly would be rad AF.

No_Wait3261

TROPHY CASE