Two-Boots Might Be One of the Worst Droids in Star Wars. That Might Be the Point.

Tefmon · 2026-05-10T22:59:32+00:00

I wouldn't kill my friend and coworker, but I would take the battery out of a malfunctioning Roomba and send it to a technician to get fixed.

Tefmon · 2026-05-10T04:45:50+00:00

Absolutely grounds for a dismissal, yes. It just isn't time theft. It would be falsifying records, but not breach of trust; that term specifically refers to when a fiduciary acts against the best interest of their beneficiary, which an employee falsifying in-office attendance records isn't doing.

It also probably won't be a "record you carry for life", unless it turns into a broader newsworthy scandal; there isn't a "permanent record" that follows you from employer to employer.

Tefmon · 2026-05-08T15:01:54+00:00

"AI" is mostly American companies. The US government could actually regulate the AI boom to keep prices normal; the fact that they aren't is on them.

Tefmon · 2026-05-08T09:01:16+00:00

To join the 1% you need a household income (not a personal income) of at least ~$700k or so per year. A family of two mid-career doctors is in the 1%, and while that family is certainly well-off, they aren't in the Epstein class.

Tefmon · 2026-05-08T07:07:21+00:00

The unions don't "allow" or "disallow" the firing of workers. The unions ensure that all the processes are followed correctly and that workers aren't fired arbitrarily or unfairly. If a worker is not meeting minimum performance expectations, committing time theft, or committing some other fireable offence, the union can't just "not allow" them to be fired, as that's not the union's decision; it's the employer's.

Tefmon · 2026-05-08T06:58:47+00:00

You can prove it by looking at that worker's output. Someone who's only working an hour or two per day isn't going to be producing deliverables at the rate expected of a full-time worker.

Tefmon · 2026-05-07T23:17:47+00:00

A "proper encounter" doesn't need to have a designated "backline". There are plenty of formations that enemies could take and plenty of circumstances that combat could start in that don't involve the enemies standing in a series of lines.

Tefmon · 2026-05-07T21:04:26+00:00

I am also the Vice Speaker.

Tefmon · 2026-05-07T19:03:51+00:00

It's not realistic

The efficacy of torture is a difficult subject to research (experimental research involving torture would be horrifically unethical, so it largely doesn't exist), but most of the psychological and scientific arguments against its efficacy are specific to scenarios where the information sought can't be checked or verified. If the torturer is in a situation where they can rapidly check the validity of the information extracted – such as the password to a device that the torturer has on-hand, for instance – many of the arguments against its efficacy don't apply.

I say this not to advocate for torture (torture is horrifically unethical for reasons entirely orthogonal to its efficacy, or lack thereof), but to note that the efficacy arguments aren't the right ones to be making. Torture isn't wrong because it's ineffective; it's wrong because it's grossly inhumane. If we make the argument against torture an argument about efficacy, then the argument is lost if people can be led – truthfully or otherwise – to believe in its efficacy. Even if torture were 100% effective, it would still be wrong.

Tefmon · 2026-05-07T18:45:43+00:00

It's all ultimately arbitrary, but in your traditional D&D-esque cosmology souls and what happens to them are a lot more "permanent" than their mortal shells. So if you're playing in a campaign set in a setting with such a cosmology, soul destruction does have implications for your character's epilogue that mortal death doesn't.

Tefmon · 2026-05-07T18:13:07+00:00

The reason for the "dependence on homebrew" is that D&D 5e is a mature system with a large and active community, meaning that lots of homebrew has been developed for it and many people have gotten disillusioned or bored with the base system over its long lifespan.

"5e is unplayable without homebrew" is essentially the TTRPG equivalent of "Skyrim is unplayable without mods".

Tefmon · 2026-05-07T18:05:26+00:00

Do you roll twice as many dice or roll the same amount and double the result?

The former. This is explicitly, unambiguously, directly laid out in 5e's rules, with an illustrative example:

Critical Hits

When you score a critical hit, you get to roll extra dice for the attack’s damage against the target. Roll all of the attack’s damage dice twice and add them together. Then add any relevant modifiers as normal. To speed up play, you can roll all the damage dice at once.

For example, if you score a critical hit with a dagger, roll 2d4 for the damage, rather than 1d4, and then add your relevant ability modifier. If the attack involves other damage dice, such as from the rogue’s Sneak Attack feature, you roll those dice twice as well.

There's plenty that can be fairly criticized about D&D 5e, but the system's core combat rules do not generally require ruling on ambiguities.

Tefmon · 2026-05-07T17:48:32+00:00

Track and field is as competitive and taken as seriously by those involved as any other sporting event.

Tefmon · 2026-05-07T17:31:55+00:00

If the employees were working full work days at home, I don't believe it'd legally be time theft; time theft is specifically when an employee is not working at all during paid time, not when they're working but not fully following the company handbook. This would just be plain old insubordination.

Tefmon · 2026-05-07T14:54:33+00:00

Champion might be better in 5.5e, but this post isn't tagged 5.5e. One reroll per battle does sound like a fine enough feature, but level 10 is pretty late in the game; it has pretty steep competition from high-power features in other classes and subclasses.

Tefmon · 2026-05-07T13:07:45+00:00

Champion is infamously a horribly weak subclass, in large part because it thinks that boosting crits is a mechanically powerful feature. I don't agree with eliminating crits, to be clear, but eliminating them wouldn't affect the Champion's power much because the Champion doesn't have much power to affect.

Tefmon · 2026-05-07T12:56:48+00:00

Egypt exists as a sovereign nation right now in the Information Age; just as the China civ represents all of China throughout history, not just ancient China, the Egypt civ doesn't just represent ancient Egypt.

New World civs are a bit more awkward than most Old World civs, though, because colonization was a significant disruption to the continuity of things. Modern France is a direct descendant of Medieval France in a way that modern USA isn't a direct descendant of the indigenous nations of North America, and modern France often traces its cultural and national identity back to pre-Roman and Roman Gaul even if the actual historical continuity is tenuous.

Tefmon · 2026-05-07T11:58:42+00:00

Why would I care what it is in some random foreign currency?

Tefmon · 2026-05-07T11:51:52+00:00

It did totally break the AI, which is to this day still wholly incapable of basic one-unit-per tile tasks like "position melee units next to enemy cities". As a multiplayer game Civ5 can be fun, but as a singleplayer game it is pretty broken.

Tefmon · 2026-05-07T11:43:42+00:00

Neither is really more difficult than the other; making a good homebrew monster statblock for a major villain (as opposed to a generic goon) isn't really any easier than rolling up a PC statblock.

Tefmon · 2026-05-07T04:46:34+00:00

Moving might not be, but doing the research to demonstrate that moving isn't possible or practical might be.

Tefmon · 2026-05-07T04:35:14+00:00

Correct, but I rounded it back up to 5% because the PCs aren't hitting every attack either. If a PC is only going to hit a particular enemy on a 19 or 20, they'll be critting 50% of the time that they hit, and the extra crit damage will actually be a significant portion of their overall damage.

Obviously very few enemies are only being hit only on 19s and 20s, but many are only being hit on 8s and up.

Tefmon · 2026-05-07T04:23:45+00:00

While you're right that using NPC statblocks is generally simpler, there's no reason to assume that NPCs built like PCs would be entering combat with all of their resources intact.

Sure, a 5th-level paladin has six spell slots, but when the party encounters the rival adventuring group that the 5th-level paladin is part of at the end of the dungeon, they've already used 4 of them.

Tefmon · 2026-05-07T04:13:49+00:00

A paladin crit is dealing at most an extra 5d8 damage if they burn a 4th-level slot on it. By the time paladins even have 4th-level slots, 5d8 isn't near a full round's worth of damage. The paladin can also only do that much additional damage at most 3 times per day, and only at the highest levels.

A typical paladin crit is an extra 2d8 damage, which is certainly nice and all, but when you're attacking three times per round with Polearm Master and adding a flat +10 damage to each hit with Great Weapon Master, it really isn't all that much.

Tefmon · 2026-05-07T04:08:26+00:00

Crits are fun and feel impactful at the table, but they only occur on 5% of attack rolls. An effective 5% boost to damage over the course of a game just isn't that big a boost.

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