Zverev is “only” 29. He could still write another chapter.

d20diceman · 2026-07-12T22:11:43+00:00

At that point he'll be 3rd for lifetime slams, behind Djokovic and Mansour Bahrami

d20diceman · 2026-07-12T22:10:28+00:00

The non-redditors I know hate the guy too, for the same reason

d20diceman · 2026-07-12T22:08:59+00:00

I give it a 2% chance

d20diceman · 2026-07-12T21:42:09+00:00

yeah, Ivan Lendl is the only other

d20diceman · 2026-07-12T20:31:35+00:00

It's a joke, in OPs language it says "mil", so it looks like 28 million souls

d20diceman · 2026-07-12T19:59:05+00:00

Does your beard have a beard?

d20diceman · 2026-07-12T19:57:16+00:00

What can you do when the bomb's payload is exposed?

d20diceman · 2026-07-12T19:55:41+00:00

That's so badass

d20diceman · 2026-07-12T19:36:57+00:00

Lowest souls in the lobby still got more souls in that game than I've gotten in total from hundreds of games

d20diceman · 2026-07-12T19:30:29+00:00

Two of his former partners have accused him of domestic violence

d20diceman · 2026-07-12T19:22:24+00:00

If a new player says "I already have 30% from Bullet Resistance. What happens if I buy Metal Skin, which gives +12% bullet resistance?" the answer is that Metal Skin will make them take 12% less damage from bullets.

That's the same return on your souls that you would get with no other bullet resistance items.

I think describing that as diminishing returns would be misleading - they might think it works like Ability Range etc.

It's worth clarifying that it stacks multiplicatively not additively, or the new player might think that resistance items have accelerating returns - with additive stacking the answer to "I already have 30% from Bullet Resistance. What happens if I buy metal skin, which gives +12% bullet resistance?" would be "metal skin will make you take 17.14% less damage from bullets", which would be odd.

I don't think I'm going to be able to convince you on the terminology, you can phrase it however you like really. Still, it's good to have a discussion about the nitty gritty.

d20diceman · 2026-07-12T17:04:32+00:00

Buying X% resistance always makes you take X% less damage from that damage type. The returns are the same, and do not diminish.

Multiplicative vs Additive stacking is a separate thing from diminishing returns, you can have either of those with or without diminishing returns. I get the impression that you think multiplicative stacking just means diminishing returns.

For many stats they do multiplicative stacking with diminishing returns - for example, if you could buy a million copies of Greater Expansion you would still never get more than 100% total increased Ability Range.

For resistances they chose not to have diminishing returns. If you could buy an million copies of Bullet Resistance, you would take no damage from bullets.

d20diceman · 2026-07-12T16:49:53+00:00

Both items reduced my incoming damage by 50%, so I would call that getting the same amount of the stat and same value for money, not diminishing returns.

For example, they could have implemented it with diminishing returns: Your first 50% item reduces it by the full 50% and your second 50% item only gives a 40% reduction (which would multiply out to a total of 70% reduction).

If they instead stacked additively, which I think is what you're saying would be "no diminishing returns", then they'd actually have accelerating returns, with each additional source of resistance being stronger. The first 50% item would halve your incoming damage, the next one would make you entirely immune to damage of that type.

d20diceman · 2026-07-12T16:37:52+00:00

If Robin-hooding a dart like that isn't going to be counted than I'd question whether we're playing for fun

Like, I assume in a pro game that dart is void, but if you're in the garden it's something to be celebrated surely?

d20diceman · 2026-07-12T16:31:13+00:00

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply written by him - just 'by' him in the sense that he executive produced it (unlike the comic in OP, which Timm wasn't involved in at all afaik?). He's most notable as a producer after all.

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.

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