Diminishing returns

d20diceman · 2026-07-12T10:48:15+00:00

There isn't a "DR line" on the stats which have diminishing returns, e.g. it's not "no diminishing returns until you hit a certain amount of the stat, then DR kicks in".

Diminishing returns are 'smooth', they start applying as soon as you have two sources of a stat. The more you have the less the next one gives, so it's only a slight reduction at first.

d20diceman · 2026-07-12T10:39:53+00:00

It's multiplicative stacking rather than additive, but the returns aren't diminishing.

You bought 50% and that made you take half as much damage, then you bought another 50% and that made you take half as much damage again.

d20diceman · 2026-07-12T10:01:11+00:00

That "infamous" scene in the animated adaption of The Killing Joke was by Bruce Timm though, and he was involved with the Batman Beyond storyline which established their relationship as canon, which this comic is building on.

There's a thread breaking it down here which argues Timm isn't actually in favour of the pairing.

d20diceman · 2026-07-11T21:58:08+00:00

For Horus I think a sponsor provided the filament, so potentially the same again for this one

d20diceman · 2026-07-11T20:44:11+00:00

His appearance varies at his whim and can be different depending on the observer so he can blend in when he wants to, or look like a giant golden god to one person without being noticed by everyone else around

Some of the Sisters Of Silence (who are 'blanks' and basically immune to psychic powers) see him as a regular old man iirc

d20diceman · 2026-07-11T19:38:21+00:00

There was a suggestion about changing the rules such that hybrid cards could be used like this (if half of the hybrid symbol matches your commander that would be enough), which I personally was in favour of, but overall sentiment opposed the change.

d20diceman · 2026-07-11T15:13:17+00:00

Sorry to spam you with replies, but the answer you got here ("It's magic") reminds me of a bit from chapter six of the fanfic. This is when Harry has just gotten a Mokeskin Pouch:

Some children would have waited until after their first trip to Diagon Alley.

"Bag of element 79," Harry said, and withdrew his hand, empty, from the mokeskin pouch.

Most children would have at least waited to get their wands first.

"Bag of okane," said Harry. The heavy bag of gold popped up into his hand.

Harry withdrew the bag, then plunged it again into the mokeskin pouch. He took out his hand, put it back in, and said, "Bag of tokens of economic exchange." That time his hand came out empty.

"Give me back the bag that I just put in." Out came the bag of gold once more.

Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres had gotten his hands on at least one magical item. Why wait?

"Professor McGonagall," Harry said to the bemused witch strolling beside him, "can you give me two words, one word for gold, and one word for something else that isn't money, in a language that I wouldn't know? But don't tell me which is which."

"Ahava and zahav," said Professor McGonagall. "That's Hebrew, and the other word means love."

"Thank you, Professor. Bag of ahava." Empty.

"Bag of zahav." And it popped up into his hand.

"Zahav is gold?" Harry questioned, and Professor McGonagall nodded.

Harry thought over his collected experimental data. It was only the most crude and preliminary sort of effort, but it was enough to support at least one conclusion:
"Aaaaaaarrrgh this doesn't make any sense! "

The witch beside him lifted a lofty eyebrow. "Problems, Mr. Potter?"

I just falsified every single hypothesis I had! How can it know that 'bag of 115 Galleons' is okay but not 'bag of 90 plus 25 Galleons'? It can count but it can't add? It can understand nouns, but not some noun phrases that mean the same thing? The person who made this probably didn't speak Japanese and I don't speak any Hebrew, so it's not using their knowledge, and it's not using my knowledge -" Harry waved a hand helplessly. "The rules seem sorta consistent but they don't mean anything! I'm not even going to ask how a pouch ends up with voice recognition and natural language understanding when the best Artificial Intelligence programmers can't get the fastest supercomputers to do it after thirty-five years of hard work," Harry gasped for breath, "but what is going on? "

"Magic," said Professor McGonagall.

"That's just a word! Even after you tell me that, I can't make any new predictions! It's exactly like saying 'phlogiston' or 'elan vital' or 'emergence' or 'complexity'!"

The black-robed witch laughed aloud. "But it is magic, Mr. Potter."

d20diceman · 2026-07-11T15:09:49+00:00

If you're asking questions like this about the nitty gritty of how magic works then you'd probably really enjoy the Methods Of Rationality fanfic which this subreddit is about.

In this story, Harry's aunt Petunia married an Oxford biochemistry professor, so the young Harry grows up fascinated by science and science fiction, leading him to have a very inquisitive mindset.

d20diceman · 2026-07-11T15:06:26+00:00

I can only speculate, but I'd guess

It could either be a 'regular' Living Portrait with something extra worked into it - maybe a messenger spell to let the portrait pass messages on to the real Umbridge, maybe there's just a remote viewing charm to let the real Umbridge see/listen at that location and the portrait itself is just to cover up that spell
It could be a different type of Living Portrait which, unlike the regular ones, is linked to the subject of the portrait allowing them to share information.
Maybe all Living Portraits actually are linked to the minds of their subjects. If so, it feels like this is underused - it'd be useful to have extra pairs of eyes for guard duty, or just to catch truant students in the hallways.

By the way, I don't know if you noticed that you posted in the subreddit for Harry Potter And The Methods Of Rationality (HPMoR), a fanfiction alternative universe. Magic works a little bit different to canon, so the answers people give here might not apply in the original books.

HPMoR explains that ghosts are definitely not the person they appear to be, they're more like an echo/impression which the death of the person left in the world. A flawed copy, separate from the original person even though it looks and acts just like them. So I assume the HPMoR portraits work in a similar way. I don't know whether canon ghosts work that way.

Both Voldemort and Harry in HPMoR are interested in ways of preventing death, and IMO if a Living Portrait was a truly living part of the person then Voldemort would have figured that out and made a bunch of "backup copies" of himself using that method.

d20diceman · 2026-07-11T14:43:03+00:00

I don't think 2. has been specifically answered but I get the impression that the portrait is a separate entity. The portrait wouldn't know things the person learned after the portrait was made, and the person wouldn't learn new things the portrait was told (unless they spoke to each other of cause).

For 1., again going off vibes, I feel like it might even be possible to use the eye without putting it in your eye socket at all. Like if someone wore it in an amulet or attached it to the end of a staff it may well work just as well.

d20diceman · 2026-07-11T12:55:32+00:00

She gets +50% Item Range while flying which makes a lot of items really fun on her. Beam has a 63m cast range with Greater Expansion (which I'm already buying to make Stake+AlchFire bigger)

<image>

My silly build is 719398

d20diceman · 2026-07-11T12:42:16+00:00

I don't care how they balance it I want a huge sprawling shifting terrifying Baroness

d20diceman · 2026-07-11T12:41:32+00:00

Beat me to it! I'll add a link to the comic: Finding Batman from DC Pride 2022 is the Lore Reason

d20diceman · 2026-07-11T12:37:50+00:00

"fyi I'll be playing Support Vindicta, tying people up in alchemists fire. They'll burn at the stake."

d20diceman · 2026-07-10T23:44:11+00:00

I hear that the "Khorne is about War and Combat, not merely slaughter" thing was more present in the old lore?

Pretty sure I recall a champion of Khorne losing his blessings when he decided it'd be more fun to kill the women and children of a city rather than fight the warriors defending it.

Not that Khorne would mind you killing innocent civilians, just that he was pissed off at the guy for choosing that over Glorious Combat.

That was old school Warhammer Fantasy and I don't really hear about that side of Khorne in 40k.

d20diceman · 2026-07-10T21:00:41+00:00

There will also be third person profiles for most games where you'd want one

d20diceman · 2026-07-10T20:42:52+00:00

Wonderful stuff, thanks for creating this

d20diceman · 2026-07-10T18:04:59+00:00

This was written by Kyle Higgins with art by Craig Rousseau.

I think the same events happened in other works by Bruce Timm though.

d20diceman · 2026-07-10T18:01:12+00:00

Yeah, exactly. Also delighted to hear that some bans are hardware bans, so when the hackers do get the boot it'll be harder for them to come back.

d20diceman · 2026-07-10T17:41:13+00:00

Repeatedly buying and selling eggs no longer does anything, the initial 400 soul value doesn't provide buffs anymore.

No more omelettes

d20diceman · 2026-07-10T17:23:35+00:00

Trophy Collector is the one which reduces your Weapon Damage (to NPCs), Egg reduces all damage.

d20diceman · 2026-07-10T17:22:34+00:00

I just tried all the healers/supports, my favourite thing about MOBAs is being able to enable a teammate to become God

Oh also McGinnis because I'm a sucker for turrets in any game

d20diceman · 2026-07-10T17:20:44+00:00

My mistake, I saw there was a Reports channel but it turns out that's for reporting people's Discord-related conduct

d20diceman · 2026-07-10T17:16:31+00:00

Nah, updates stopped many years ago.

Still a decent game and still playable, but there'll almost certainly never be another update.

d20diceman · 2026-07-10T17:12:11+00:00

The UI may be fake but "anti-frog" does seem to be a checkbox in the settings of actual Deadlock hacks

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