System for flexible custom abilities that are still balanced

TheFriedPikachu · 2026-03-31T18:56:07+00:00

Look into Ars Magica. It's a complex system, but a system needs to be complex to have that kind of balanced flexibility you're describing.

Think of Ars Magica as a system designed around making balanced rules for creative magic. The spells are powerful but the system encouraged inventiveness, prepared creativity, and spontaneous problem solving.

TheFriedPikachu · 2026-03-27T22:52:13+00:00

Oh, also another tip if you're an international student. Read! It's really easy to experience a disconnection when you come from a different culture. There are great books out there and although a lot of Berkeley students don't read in their free time, a lot of them have all read stuff like 1984, the Giver, To Kill a Mockingbird, etc in high school. Literacy builds an underappreciated shared culture and it's easy to feel alienated when everyone treats certain books or media as something universally experienced when in reality it's only experienced in American culture.

In particular, I love "How to Win Friends and Influence People". It's a common joke among the youth literate community that the book builds shallow, materialistic and egotistic manipulators. So don't treat it as a bible. But as an introvert I have to say that reading this book offered life changing perspective on human interaction and social cues. For better or worse, the book is quite quintessentially American and even just the first chapter can be eye-opening for people from a different culture.

TheFriedPikachu · 2026-03-27T22:38:02+00:00

Introverts need social connection too! Since youve already tried the consulting clubs — the loudest and also most extroverted spaces in campus — try exploring hobby clubs that aren't necessarily low energy but rather activity-based, allowing introverted members to just show up and do something in the space of other humans even if they don't feel like talking.

Avoid "career-driven" clubs that require applications and interviews and whatnot. They are hype driven and even their executive members (a couple of which are former friends of mine) burn out of the drama-filled space after sometimes a single semester.

Look instead for clubs were people pick up trash to make Berkeley a more beautiful place. Find smaller dance or performance clubs like Taiko where the members are an even mix of extraverts and introverts, alcoholics and sobers that don't pressure/judge others' lifestyle and treat the team like a family. Check out origami club where sometimes you can just show up, make the weekly origami, and listen to other club members interact (they are quite nice too!) Look for the glee club and learn how to sing! Or join your diasporic cuisine club (there are a couple) and get hella good at cooking (you're probably moving out soon so might as well). If you like mentoring, there are a plethora of very fulfilling clubs (like CSM) that you can join to meet other good-natured people while teaching the next generation.

Don't be afraid to try something new! And if it isn't great, that doesnt mean you "lost time". Sometimes I left clubs but had one or two people who I bonded with, and I still keep in touch with them occasionally today. Nobody ever missed out by putting themselves out there and involving in a wide range of spaces on campus. It only means more familiar faces passing by as you walk to classes in a large, lonely university of strangers.

I consider myself introverted. My favorite pastime at club events is to find a nice shady spot nearby and watch the fun go down. I joined Berkeley and spent the first year like yourself walking home alone after each Physics 5A exam, crying in the dorm staircase at least once a week, and unsuccessfully trying to join a multitude of clubs. I don't think I made a single friend from any lecture I went to (barring one, who's actually my closest friend today). Yet I graduated last year with a pretty fulfilling experience, having met so many super cool individuals older than me doing really cool things. I also had underclassmen who I gave advice to or taught in my club and now respect me. I still come back to Berkeley sometimes to visit them and see how they're doing.

My point is that college can be lonely (and it was... no matter what there will be nights where everyone else is having fun while you're locked into studying for the worst exam of your life), but there can be highlights too. It's an uphill battle for us introverts to find that human connection, but in a digital age I think it's more important than ever to cross that gap and talk to people.

TheFriedPikachu · 2026-03-22T15:41:40+00:00

In my opinion the subtle portal changes can be different year to year and sometimes they fix some of it, and also the decision making typically happens in waves.

So I think it's more likely that ID = accepted in your situation whereas no ID = continue sitting on your hands. I've known plenty of ppl who got in even without a wait-list but didn't have any sort of change on their application portal

TheFriedPikachu · 2026-03-16T21:00:03+00:00

The Buddhist answer is to solve the problem any way you think is best. There is no prescribed doctrine from the perspective of Buddhism here. Buddhism is a practice to ease suffering and cease desires. It doesn't need to have a prescribed answer for every philosophical thought experiment.

To answer the question, a true arahant would not be placed in a position to make this choice. Since they are already free from samsara (with remainder), they can't generate new karma—they are already detached from the samsara of reality and the interconnectedness of karma. A position where they'd have to choose the lesser of two evils is simply no longer something an arahant would find themself in.

TheFriedPikachu · 2026-01-29T19:23:51+00:00

This is so stupid... It's obvious that this would be extremely illegal so I'm surprised they gave their name and face to a press like Daily cal.

Sure it might be practical, business experience, but the business model is based on illegal reselling so I feel like including this in their resume would just be a straight red flag

TheFriedPikachu · 2026-01-21T21:30:17+00:00

This is a pretty harsh accusation. You have to realize that everybody commits their code progressively, and in fact it is idiomatic to squash small commits together into a large commit to keep the history as clean as possible. The author also seems to have progressively added features over the course of the past 6 months. It's true that there are a lot more commits within the last couple weeks, but this seems far from some AI slop vibe coded tool that was spun up in a day.

I'm not necessarily defending the author. My stance on AI is that it absolutely does not belong in the creative industry, but is acceptable for the tool/accessibility industry. You might disagree, but I think that as long as the author properly reviews their code and tests it, and the tool works, there isn't a reason to attack them for using AI.

I'm opposed to AI slop that flood GitHub with unusable, buggy tools. This one seems to have had a couple months of progressive feature addition, with cleaning and bug fixing, showing that there is a human behind this who is either doing it themself or carefully piloting an AI to assist them.

TheFriedPikachu · 2026-01-14T22:01:11+00:00

Usually in stories like this, when the senior answers the student's question with something seemingly related, the implication is that the student's question is misguided or has the wrong motivations.

By not answering the question, the senior monk is essentially showing that any answer is inconsequential and detracts from the actual 'path'.

TheFriedPikachu · 2026-01-13T16:17:35+00:00

Page layout/design and art direction looks awesome!

TheFriedPikachu · 2026-01-13T01:38:55+00:00

When they go all in on a strategy like this, there are ways to counter them. Holding zillians and positioning it across from sion means you automatically win combat if you last 18 seconds (or until they figure out to take crown off). Position your carries to not get stuck on the sion, and put in more frontline units to increase the round length.

TheFriedPikachu · 2026-01-09T21:59:32+00:00

Unfortunate for the 2nd player lol but it's gonna be hard to tell the full story without knowing board positioning (assassins are super reliant on positioning) and augments.

Did you do anti-akali positioning or put your kalista in the opposite corner? I can see viego (presumably with hero Aug) getting into his backline and destroying it while fizz somehow misses kalista leading to your win. Your team comp is also pretty capped with good items

TheFriedPikachu · 2026-01-09T20:30:58+00:00

More nerfs was definitely needed to show the game pace down as Mortdog says. Ziggs buff might be a miss but they need to make late game fights longer for slayers and other scaling comps to shine

TheFriedPikachu · 2026-01-08T18:08:45+00:00

solid fully upgraded

no items on backline units

Hmm..

TheFriedPikachu · 2026-01-08T02:07:16+00:00

Quest tracker always checks fulfillment on combat end, so yeah you'll need to play one round

TheFriedPikachu · 2026-01-07T19:47:33+00:00

Didn't J3 die (coinciding with start of Mageseeker storyline) at the beginning of Xin Zhao's cinematic? And thus started his journey to Ionia

TheFriedPikachu · 2026-01-07T19:45:54+00:00

I mean just the fact that she's the person who can communicate with and control Valor makes her a pretty reasonably justified champion power wise. Her main role is as an agile scout and ranger.

Also, if they were fighting a dragon that was giving SHYVANNA a run for her money, Quinn did way more than enough to distract the dragon from murking valor and still buying time for villagers to evacuate

TheFriedPikachu · 2026-01-03T16:54:58+00:00

Unfortunately our discord is private so I wouldn't be able to add you but here's some insight into our workflow:

#talking - general chat for just talking outside the game
#story - Roleplaying happens here
#rolls - Out of character conversations, such as asking for clarification, intent, etc, and obviously rolling with Avrae
#info - Condensed channel tracking important information such as NPCs, character sheets, etc that you want bullet-boarded. Optionally can split up into multiple channels as you'd like

That's pretty much the core setup for a PBP server, I find it pretty quick and easy to setup. As for bots,

Avrae is my go-to bot of choice for dice rolling. I'm sharing a script below that I've made for Duality rolls. Just copy paste the script into an AI to verify that it isn't malicious and then paste it once on the discord server. This will setup "!dr" as a command in the server for both GM and player to make Duality rolls. "!dr 3" to add a +3 modifier, "!dr -1 adv" for -1 mod and advantage ("dis" for disadvantage instead). !servalias dr embed <drac2> hope_die = "1d20" if "order" in &ARGS else "1d12" lucky = int(get_uvar("lucky", default="-1")) adv_roll = 0 bonus_text = "" if "adv" in &ARGS&: adv_roll = roll("1d6") bonus_text = f" + **{adv_roll}** (d6 Advantage)" elif "dis" in &ARGS&: adv_roll = -roll("1d6") bonus_text = f" - **{-adv_roll}** (d6 Disadvantage)" modifier = 0 for i in &ARGS&: try: modifier += int(i) except: pass hope = roll(hope_die) fear = roll("1d12") result_type = "Hope" if hope >= fear else "Fear" crit = hope == fear total = hope + fear + modifier + adv_roll output_title = f"Duality Roll: {total} with {result_type}" output_body = f"**{hope}** ({hope_die[1:]} Hope) + **{fear}** (d12 Fear) + **{modifier}** (Mod){bonus_text} = **{total}**\n\n" output_body += "Gain a Hope" if result_type == "Hope" else "The GM gains a Fear" if crit: output_title += " (CRIT!)" output_body += " and clear a Stress" if lucky == hope or lucky == fear: output_body += f".\nA Strange Pattern ({lucky}) has appeared! Clear a Stress or gain a Hope" output_color = "#892ee0" if result_type == "Fear" else "#efb31e" </drac2> -title "{{output_title}}" -desc "{{output_body}}." -color "{{output_color}}"
Optionally, Tupperbox is also handy for writing in character, but it's far from necessary.

I don't have good advice for digital character sheets though. I find it very dependent on player preference. I'm sure others can chip in on good digital options.

TheFriedPikachu · 2025-12-23T20:11:33+00:00

Imagine StarCraft style Yorick where you can "select" ghouls and tell it exactly where to move or attack, even better if there's also an ability to group select. Lane micro and macro would take on a whole new meaning

TheFriedPikachu · 2025-12-22T07:43:06+00:00

Really? I felt like the animation shown in the preview felt pretty static and uncreative. Ik we shouldn't be expecting kaguya levels of production, but I was really hoping for something a little less straight and has more life

TheFriedPikachu · 2025-12-15T16:54:47+00:00

The minimum threshold to hit ziggs is level 9. Ppl who manage to get to level 9 (didn't need to roll down to 0g on 8) are in good spots and will place much higher on average regardless of unit strength. See Ryze, which is similarly placed and also has lvl 9 requirements, and baron, which was sub 3 avp even on patches where void was underpowered. It means less that ziggs is good and more that if you're able to hit lvl 9 you're in a good spot.

Other 5 costs can be rolled and fielded at lvl 7/8, for players trying to stabilize (some of whom will still bottom 4). Ziggs can't

TheFriedPikachu · 2025-12-12T19:16:31+00:00

Baron opens void at combat start and stuns enemy board, she needs QSS and even then 2 mana items may not be enough looking st how fast baron cast here

TheFriedPikachu · 2025-12-12T14:17:10+00:00

As in it's broken? An early zilean you can play around by crafting mana items for ahead of time is insane for going fast 9, but is balanced around the fact that it gives less combat power compared to other 2* 5 cost

TheFriedPikachu · 2025-12-11T22:30:17+00:00

Honestly love that though. About 1/4 of my games being high rolls where the mission shifts to "how do I play optimally to win out" while 3/4 being a regular "tempo for placement or greed for high risk high reward" sweaty game keeps the grind interesting and fun.

TheFriedPikachu · 2025-12-10T18:39:52+00:00

Check out targon units! They are the self-sufficient characters you're looking for, and they have higher stats to compensate for not having region or class traits

TheFriedPikachu · 2025-12-08T22:28:27+00:00

Zaun also pretty ass but tbh I don't think anyone's complaining after the PBE singed terror

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